Torchwood: Devastation Day
by Maria Patenaude
Summary: After rift storms tear up Cardiff, Team Torchwood suffers some grave losses. In their attempt to pick up the pieces, they find more than they had ever suspected was possible. And yet, still less than they desire. Part 2 of 5.
1. Chapter 1

**Part 2 of this fanfic (specifically "Devastation Day") was written after the Torchwood Season 2 finale, during Doctor Who Season 4, and pre Children of Earth. It is a diligently-researched work of love that I never intended to make public; I began it for my own enjoyment, and continued it out of love, and as a means of coping with some of the grief left behind by TW Season 2. With that in mind, R&R, and I hope you enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: Torchwood and Doctor Who are franchises that don't belong to me. I simply like to visit their 'verse and play. **

**Primarily, what's not mine belongs to Russell T. Davies et al. of the current incarnation of the Whoniverse.**

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My name is Sage, and I am a Time Lord. Sort of. But that doesn't matter right now. The story of the Fall of Gallifrey and the Time War are long ago and far away to me. I'm here to talk about today.

Today is Devastation Day. Ianto named it, just before he left the room. Left me to view the wreckage I had not been here to prevent. Left to mourn the loss of two colleagues and friends.

Doctor Owen Harper, Torchwood Officer 565. Deceased. Died while containing the meltdown of Turnmill Nuclear Power Station. Toshiko Sato, Torchwood Officer 563. (1) Deceased. Gunshot wound; bled to death while remotely assisting Doctor Harper to contain the Turnmill incident.

All roads in and out of Cardiff were rendered inaccessible by several large explosions. Oddly enough, this will make my job easier. Cover-up duty.

I'm Torchwood Officer 000. I don't exist.

In the morning, I'll have to lie about how they died.

But first... I'm to revisit how they lived.

* * *

Jack, Ianto, and Gwen have already taken down and stored Tosh and Owen's personal effects that were in the Hub. Owen's lab coat, Tosh's reading glasses... the small things we use every day and never think of as reminders of who we are... never think of how our friends will see them as reflections of us when we are gone.

As Ianto closed Toshiko's personnel file, a video she'd embedded in the system some time ago surfaced. She told her friends it would all be okay. But it's not. It's really not.

Jack has already decided that the story we will tell their families is that they died in the explosions, their bodies vaporized. Ianto volunteered to speak to Toshiko's family. I volunteered to tell Owen's mother. Owen had sent Jack an email once, the first time he died (long story), that he'd like his gravestone to state the number of times he'd saved the world. To have them both gone this way, with no gravestones and no funerals, no one knowing how bravely they faced death to save us all... just feels wrong. This is the true devastation. I think this is what Ianto meant all along.

I'm at Tosh's flat, packing everything she owns into boxes labelled with the Torchwood logo. I drove her car here to do it. It smelled of her favourite sandalwood perfume, and so does her room. I laid down on her bed for a while and cried. I couldn't help it. I hardly knew her, but she'd been the closest thing to a girl friend I'd ever had in those few days that had passed so fast and ended so badly. I packed her clothes away, her bedding, her books. So many books! Well-loved... you could tell by the wear in the binding, bent but not broken, just as my books had always been before I'd gone blind. I don't know where my own books are now; I'll have to ask Jack.

Everything Toshiko left behind will be locked up in a storage shed. Such a sad end to such an amazing life! I emptied every drawer of all of her things, instructed only to dispose of anything perishable and to leave the furniture bare. As I took a garbage bag to her kitchen, I saw a photo pinned to the fridge of Tosh and Owen together, smiling... so young... and I burst into tears again. I was glad I had taken this duty, though. It would have been too much for Gwen or Ianto, or even Jack, to bear. I slipped the photo into my pocket. I'm going to keep it. Let Jack try and stop me.

* * *

Owen's flat was a quicker job than I'd expected after dropping off Tosh's effects at the storage depot. It was also much harder than I'd expected. I'd been in his apartment once before, back when I couldn't see. Now it was mostly empty. He'd thrown away practically everything after the first time he died. He couldn't "eat, sleep, or shag", he said, and he didn't need to bathe very often, since he no longer had sweat or tears or bodily fluids of any kind, so he'd chucked almost everything.

I turned on his iPod as I stowed what little was left in those sterile Torchwood cartons. Music makes almost any job go faster, I find. I'd done the same at Tosh's, her MP3 player being the last thing I'd packed. Owen's was a different matter, though. As I was fishing an old porno mag from underneath his sofa, Moby's "One of These Mornings" (2) played, shocking me so badly I hit my head and laid on the floor as I cried.

_One of these mornings/ Won't be very long/ You will look for me/ And I'll be gone._

I cried so hard it's a wonder the neighbours didn't bang on the door or call the police. Of course, they may have still been shell-shocked themselves.

Owen Harper… He'd been a medic at Cardiff A&E before Jack recruited him to Torchwood. He was no stranger to loss. He very nearly had a mental breakdown after his fiancée, Kate, had been killed by an alien parasite. Torchwood had covered it up, but Owen had been persistent. He'd always believed that saving lives was the only thing that made his own existence worthwhile. He died saving lives, both times, and that's what I'm going to tell his mother. The story behind it will be fake, but she should know who her son really was. She hardly gave him a chance to be a good person, but he was one anyway, beneath the layers of cynicism and sarcasm. And he saved lives every day, beyond his last breath.

Owen Harper. A good man.

I've just come across something he missed when he cleaned out his bathroom. A bottle of moisturizer. Of all the things… I never expected to come across this. It was the same scent he'd had on his face and hands the night I'd come home with him all those years ago. The container was on the floor, behind the toilet. I suppose it had bounced. I don't care. I've just rinsed it off and put it in my other pocket.

Someday Tosh's photo will fade. Someday Owen's lotion will stop smelling of Owen and smell of age. I don't care. If this is all I can have to lay my hands on when I miss them, then I'm keeping these things.

No graves to visit. Tosh is in Cryo Bay 38, (3) next to Suzie Costello, and I suppose that's the closest thing to a headstone she'll ever have. Owen will have nothing.

The wounds are still so fresh. It's hard to believe that someday they will fade. All we'll have will be our memories of them. I suppose it should be somewhat comforting that immortal Jack and long-living Sage will be two of the people remembering them. Somehow, in that way, they'll live forever. But where I'm standing, staring at myself in Owen's bathroom mirror, I'm not comforted. Because the pain will live forever, too.

* * *

1) Guessing at a number here. Owen is 565, and was recruited after Toshiko. I placed Suzie between them, but Suzie may have been recruited before Toshiko. This is unknown.

2) This song is actually on Toshiko's iPod in the episode "To the Last Man", not Owen's.

3) Suzie is indeed in Bay 37. Since Torchwood personnel seem to be kept in certain rows, I assigned Toshiko to Bay 38.


	2. Chapter 2

"Yes, Jack?" I answered my mobile, just after locking up Owen's things.

"How's the stowing going?" he asked me, his voice gruffer than usual.

"I just finished," I told him.

"Are you all right?" he asked me.

"Yeah, fine," I lied. I'd just opened Tosh's car door and gotten another whiff of sandalwood, just realized that even that would soon be gone. So much loss...

"No, you're not. It was rough, wasn't it. I should have done it myself," he self-chastised.

"No, Jack, I was glad to do it," I told him sincerely. "How are you and Ianto holding up?"

"Trying to help out the police as much as we can at the moment. Gwen's coordinating. Actually, even Rhys is helping out today. We've got some of the roads unblocked. Ianto is about to leave for the Sato's. If you can get back here in 20 minutes or less you can ride with him up to London," he told me.

"That'd be great, Jack. Thank you," I sighed.

"Everything smells like her, doesn't it," Jack said.

"Yeah," I managed, voice constricted.

"I'll get you your own car, Sage. I'd have loaned you the SUV, but—"

"You needed it. Also, it draws attention and my fake driver's license is expired. I'll be there soon, Jack. Please have Ianto wait for me."

"Will do," he said. "And Sage... Thanks."

"It's the least I can do," I said. "See you soon, old friend."

* * *

"Tell me a story about you and Jack," Ianto asked of me as he was driving us up to London.

"What sort of story?" I asked. "Action-adventure? Comedy?"

"Both?" he ventured.

"Want to know how we ended up in that morgue locker?"

"Are you sure that's a comedy?" he inquired dubiously.

"It is. I swear. Do you want to know?"

"Do you have to ask? Those half-statements of his are so frustrating!"

I chuckled. "I know; he does it to me, too, but about you guys." I winced, feeling like an ass for referring to the team that had just been halved, but Ianto just stayed stoically silent.

"So, you and Jack, hiding in a morgue locker..." he prompted after a minute or so.

"Vampires," I told him.

"You're joking," he said disbelievingly.

"I swear," I began. "It was 1915. A group of black ops scientists called The Forge got their hands on a Vampire that had slipped through the Rift. Torchwood One had it in their custody at the time and handed it over to these people for a sort of experiment in bio-weaponry. They called it the Twilight Virus and were infecting humans with it to create super-soldiers for the war. 'For King and Country', they said. Jack and I set out to shut the project down. Vampires were originally released into this universe by the Time Lords, so it was my responsibility, but Jack wouldn't let me go on my own. He disobeyed direct orders to go with me, to protect me."

"He loves you," Ianto remarked, smiling.

"But can you imagine Jack as a Vampire? I mean, he's immortal already. Cross that with Vampirism and you get a potentially unstoppable, utterly deadly creature for all eternity. I should never have told him Vampires can kill Time Lords," I sighed.

"You mean permanently?" Ianto asked me, surprised.

"Yes. There a very few things that can, but a Vampire is one of them," I admitted. "Anyway, we arrived at the complex and all the test subjects had escaped. They'd slaughtered everyone and were sort of roosting in there. Stupid me, sneaking in there at night."

"But that's standard operating procedure," Ianto interjected. "Infiltrate when you're least likely to be noticed."

"Sure, that's SOP for humans. Not for Vampires, though. Jack and I snuck in, found this bloodbath, and then who shows up but my father!"

"Your father? But weren't you and Jack trying to find him?" Ianto asked confused.

"Timelines, Ianto. Jack could only meet an incarnation of my father after they'd _originally_ met each other. That was Gen Nine. I could sense this was a Sixth Incarnation Time Lord, not a Ninth, Tenth, or later. So we backed into the mortuary so as not to be seen."

"Being with Jack is what's kept you from reuniting with your father, isn't it," Ianto intuited. I nodded. "I'd wondered what he meant when he said you'd kept him from running off to meet him and destroying the world in the process."

"Jack is my curse and my blessing," I told Ianto. "He saved me, protected me, and I did the same for him. But back to the morgue," I said. "Jack and I back into this mortuary and it's got corpses laid out, like for an autopsy. But they weren't corpses at all!"

"Vampires."

"Exactly. And they were stirring. So the only safe place to go where we wouldn't be seen was into a locker. Jack didn't even think. He just grabbed me, pushed me in, jumped in on top of me, and closed the door."

"When do we get to the 'comedy' part, Sage? This is morbid," Ianto pointed out.

"Right now, actually. See, he dove in feet first, so he _sat_ on me! It's a damn good thing Time Lords can withstand suffocation. Picture all six feet of dashing Jack pressed back-first onto all five-three of me! And he complained about _me_ getting heavy! Anyway, it took some shifting to re-arrange ourselves, especially without being heard. But we could hear my dad! It was the weirdest thing. He was with a girl, as usual." I rolled my eyes. "And he was monologuing at the Vampires. Jack says to me, 'Why doesn't he _kill_ them already? Stake through the heart or something?' So I'm reminding him my dad's a pacifist, talk first, kill only if absolutely necessary—"

"As opposed to Jack, who tends to shoot first and ask questions later," Ianto added.

"Right. And I said to him, 'Jack... is that a stake in your _pants_?'" Ianto burst out laughing, but he didn't understand the full irony yet. "I wasn't sure what was switching on the tent pole, though. The close quarters or the Doctor worship. I was about to ask him when the girl with my dad said, frustrated, 'Spare me from cryptic old men!' (1) Good thing Jack chose that moment to kiss me, or we'd have been found for sure. I laughed right into his mouth."

"I can guess what happened next," Ianto said morosely.

"What? No, no room for that. And anyway, I'd just turned twenty-three. Jack still thought of me as a kid sister for the most part. We did use up most of our oxygen with the heavy breathing, though, I passed out, and the next morning I had to wiggle out head-first and kicked Jack right in the face. Then I had to yank him out of there because I'd made his limbs go numb, and I dislocated my shoulder pulling," I explained.

"Oof," Ianto remarked.

"Jack popped my shoulder back in after he'd recovered some movement, but he's never let me live that down. Or the kick in the face," I told him.

"I'd tease him right back about that hard-on," Ianto told me with a malicious glint in his eye. "So how long before he stopped deluding himself and finally gave in to what he felt for you?"

"Eighty years, all told," I admitted.

"So that New Year's Day you mentioned..."

"Yeah, that was my first time. An 88-year-old virgin; isn't that pitiful?" I said.

"Why did he wait so long?" Ianto asked me, shocked.

"Eighty years isn't as long to him and me as it is to you, sweet Ianto," I reminded him, "but mostly I think it was because of how we met, and what we were to each other. Do you remember what he called me, aside from his friend?"

"'My sister, my daughter'," he echoed. "How _did_ you find each other? You didn't come through the Rift, did you?"

"No, but I think it may have had something to do with why my Vortex Manipulator was drawn to Earth. I landed in Brynblaidd. Hill of the Wolf, right?" Ianto had gone deathly pale and was gripping the steering wheel very tightly. "Ianto, what is it? What's wrong?"

"The Harvest. They're cannibals, the villagers of Brynblaidd. How did you get out?"

"I walked. I saw no one, Ianto, I just walked. Torchwood had detected my arrival, of course. Brecon Beacons is far enough out and I was such a small blip that they didn't really bother with me, though. It was New Year's Day of 1900. No one wanted to go all the way out there, so they sent Jack. He found me walking toward Cardiff. A very dirty little girl carrying a very small suitcase. I had a broken arm, moderate dehydration, and a stick through my gut. Rough landing. He saw my wrist strap right away, picked me up off my feet and asked me my name. I told him it was Sage. He kept pressing me for a surname, still thinking I was either a very young Time Agent recruit or the daughter of one, and I kept saying my name was Sage. So he asked me what my parents' names were, and I said 'My father is called the Doctor.' He pressed his ear to my chest, heard two heartbeats, and that was that. He knew who I was. He took me home and hid me. Told Torchwood it had been some sort of meteorite that had passed through a short-lived rift storm and been vaporized on impact. He fabricated a witness testimony and they left it at that."

"How did you survive?

"The stick missed everything important, and I heal pretty quickly. Also, he kissed me," I told him, smiling at the memory.

"He kissed you?"

"Never noticed how quickly you heal after he kisses you? It's something rather special he can do. Energy transfer, I guess you could say. More like he gives you a bit of his life force. It's not much, and he has to do it consciously, but it's an amazing gift. A remnant of what Rose did to bring him back to life, I suppose. And I saw my father in his mind, felt what he felt for him. The love, the admiration, the resentment at being left behind. We were kindred, you see."

"Yes. I see. When did your love for him change, Sage?" Ianto asked me. "You waited for him."

"In 1908. I was sixteen. He was away, and I missed him. I realized I didn't miss him in the same way I usually did. I was really mad at myself for it, too."

"Was there ever anyone else?" he asked me gently.

"Oh, a few boys tried, but I kept to myself a lot. I had to. I was using the name Miranda Small already, but my birth records said 1892; that's why you couldn't find me. Anyway, I never loved anyone the way I love Jack," I sighed.

"Why did you sleep with Owen?" Ianto ventured cautiously.

"Well, I was only human," I teased him. Then I sighed and told him the truth. "I was lonely, Ianto, and he was nice to me. No clichés, no bullshit, no lies. He didn't care that I was broken. He was broken, too."

"Did you know he knew Jack?"

"I found out later. Smelled him on Jack's hands. I thought it was very funny at the time. Not so funny now. If I'd known he was Torchwood, I'd have backed away, same as I've done to every other man before and since," I admitted. "Hurting Jack was never part of the equation. I was just... hollow."

"I know," Ianto said, his voice constrained. "After Lisa died, that's exactly how I felt. Empty. Purposeless. Jack gave me a purpose. He forgave my betrayal. I think I'd always been drawn to him, but that's when I really began to love him."

"I was never in love with Owen," I said softly, "but he made me feel so _alive_. He saved me from myself, and he never knew. I..."

"You were going to kill yourself," Ianto guessed. I nodded. "Why?"

"Because loving Jack hurt too much. Because not being loved was living death in and of itself. There were times Jack disappeared and I thought he'd forgotten me. I was too frail as a human. I was giving up again when you came along," I murmured.

"Me? What hope did _I_ give you? You knew what I was to him. I came to you and told you you didn't exist."

"You cared," I said simply. "You love him so much... It gave me hope that maybe someday someone like you would love me, too."

"Someone like me?" he echoed.

"Loyal. Steadfast. Brave... And sweet. You're a wonder, Ianto Jones. I didn't know people like you existed. That's why meeting you gave me hope."

"I think you're over-selling me, Sage," he remarked, blushing.

"No," I said, patting him on the thigh. "I'm not." Then I sang to him softly, "_You would be/ so easy to love/ So easy to idolize/ all others above_..."

"Cole Porter," Ianto remarked. "Jack likes that one."

"Cole was his kind of man. Come to think of it, Jack's Cole's kind of man," I mused, rather amused. "_Night and day, you are the one/ Only you beneath the moon and under the sun_," I sang.

"His favourite is 'Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye'," Ianto told me. "It's beautiful, but very sad..."

"It used to be 'Anything Goes'," I told him, "but he's changed so very much... He always asked for 'Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye' when he'd come 'round the pub early enough to catch me performing. Gareth, my boss, always got annoyed over that. It cleared the pub out, that one. Too depressing... Anyway, I've always loved 'Night and Day' the most."

"Did Jack ever meet Cole Porter?" Ianto asked suddenly.

"You're not supposed to meet your heroes, Ianto," I said evasively.

"I only ask because I heard once he'd written 'Night and Day' with a man called Jack in mind. (2) A performer, supposedly, but... Have you ever heard Jack sing? He's rather amazing."

"It's possible, Ianto," I conceded with a chuckle. "And yeah, Jack's voice is enviable. He never sings for _anyone_, though, except me... and now you. So, I wonder what that means... I suppose he really meant it, about loving us both."

"Does that make you Linda Porter?" he asked me.

"In what sense?"

"You've accepted everything about him. You're willing to share his love," Ianto pointed out.

"With you, Ianto? Of course. You're very good for him. I can be... well; you pointed it out already; pretty morbid."

"I thought you were a laugh. Running around the Hub, talking to your coffee," he remarked, smiling. "You're very much like Jack. Sometimes you're excitable and no one can keep up with you. Other times you're very grave. The difference is you give straight answers most of the time."

"Most of the time?"

"You have a tell," he informed me.

"I do?"

"Yes. Your pupils dilate. Just for a second. It's very strange to see."

"My pupils? I'll have to lie with my eyes closed!" I joked.

"Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me. And with Jack, I suppose. After a century, I'm sure he's noticed," he said.

"What else can you tell me that I've not said, then, my observant Mr Jones?" I prompted.

"You don't like Gwen very much. You think she's a silly child," he told me.

"Oh... well, that's a bit unfair. I just think she's too much of a girl... I mean, I cry. I like to dress prettily—"

"Very prettily," Ianto complimented.

"Thank you... But Gwen is full of all of this 'Do you fancy me?' and 'Oh, I'll just never tell Rhys about Owen.' and 'Sage's eyes are prettier than mine. That's not fair.' So much senseless babble in her head. She only focuses when she needs to, apparently. Jack said she was organising the recovery?"

"She's amazing when she takes charge. You ought to see that side of her," Ianto remarked. "She can be dead intimidating."

"I'll keep that in mind," I conceded. "What else do you know about me, then?"

"You like me more than you're saying," he ventured.

"I've told you—"

"Yes, but you slipped up. You were musing aloud and said 'I don't know if I can share you with Jack' when what I was expecting was 'share Jack with you'," Ianto informed me, blushing once again.

"I said that out loud? Oh, that's embarrassing. I'm sorry. Did it make you uncomfortable?"

"No, it was a nice thing to hear. I'm just wondering what's behind it."

"You're gorgeous," I pointed out. "Oh, but I _do_ love the way you love, Ianto. I know I said _that_."

"Are you saying you're jealous of Jack?"

"Am I being foolish, Ianto? Am I being a girl about it?" I asked him. "Wait, what are you doing?" I asked, although I could see very well that he was pulling off the road. "Ianto?" I said tentatively. He took off his seatbelt and leaned over, kissing me tenderly on the lips, rendering me breathless. "Oh," I sighed.

"I like you," he murmured. "You're not demanding. You don't play games. You've been watching me and complimenting me and you never expected anything in return. Loving Jack is fun and freeing, but all-consuming and terrifying. Loving you... I get the sense that you give far more than you take."

"Like you," I pointed out. He nodded. "What do you think Jack will say?"

"'The more the merrier'," he quipped.

"Sure, but how do you think he'll feel about it?"

"Like Christmas comes more than once a year," he murmured. "Well, that's how I felt about it when I realized..."

"Should we tell him right away, or should we wait until things have quieted down?" I asked him.

"Things are never quiet at Torchwood," he pointed out. "Aside from which, he'll probably know the moment we return. You've got a glow about you, Sage. It wasn't there before."

"I was so worried... And the timing is awful," I groaned.

"No, it's not. He needs some happy news. We all do," Ianto said.

"What will Gwen say?"

"'Congratulations', I hope."

"But what will she _think_?"

"She'll think we're crazy and that it'll never work," he said.

"Do you think it will?"

Ianto kissed me again, more firmly this time, then smiled. "You're easy to love."

* * *

1) This is not the vampire story in which the Doctor's companion actually said that, but it was witty, so I borrowed it. Sage's tale loosely references _Project: Twilight_ (Sixth Doctor and Evelyn). The quote is from _Death Comes to Time_ (Eighth Doctor and Ace).

2) Probably not historically accurate. Just trust me and watch the movie _De-Lovely_. Then you'll get the joke. ;)


	3. Chapter 3

"He died saving lives, Mrs Harper."

"That's what doctors do," Owen's mother said dismissively. "Heal the sick. And he got himself and his patients blown up, did he?"

"No, Mrs Harper, that's not it at all. He was off duty when the first of the explosions hit. He left his flat to aid the injured. He—"

"Frankly, I don't care," she interrupted. "He's been dead to me for years. Then you come here, a stranger, and try to paint him as some kind of hero. You're wasting your time, and, what's worse, you're wasting mine. And who are you, anyway? Some girl he was seeing, and too young for him, by the look of you. Go back to Cardiff. Forget him. I have."

"I've not come a hundred and fifty miles to listen to you berate him, madam," I told her firmly, standing up. She nearly dropped her tea. "Owen was a good friend, a great man... and a hero. He will be sorely missed." This last part came out choked with tears. "I pity you for never knowing your own son. Good day, Mrs Harper," I concluded, leaving her apartment hurriedly, needing to be away from her venom.

When I exited the building, Ianto immediately opened his arms to me. He held me close as I cried. His own eyes were still red from having spoken to Tosh's distraught family. "Sage", he murmured in my ear after a few moments, "look up."

Owen's mother stood framed in her third storey window. She'd been watching us. She could see for herself that we were truly mourning her son... Two strangers in business suits, important people who had loved her son and were upset over his death. She frowned in confusion, wide-eyed, then pulled the curtain closed.

"I sort of yelled at her," I admitted to Ianto.

"I think she needed it," he decided. "Come on. Let's go home."

* * *

"Make sure it gets done," Jack said firmly to someone, then hung up the phone. "How did the families take it?" he asked immediately.

"Toshiko's family is devastated, Jack, as expected," I told him.

"Owen's mother, on the other hand, received a tongue lashing," Ianto reported.

"You _yelled_ at her?" he asked me, shocked.

"She needed to be yelled at, sir," Ianto stated.

"She was very flippant, Jack, I'm sorry. I couldn't stop myself."

"I was hoping she'd have outgrown her animosity," Jack admitted. "Most mothers do when the day of reckoning arrives... And _you two_ have a secret!" he changed the subject, sounding both suspicious and amused. I tried to sneak a look at Ianto and found he was doing the same to me. We smiled at each other. Suddenly Jack had come around his desk and had his arms draped across our shoulders. "It was a _very_ pleasant drive to London and back, I take it," he said, winking at me.

"You planned it!" I exclaimed.

"And it worked. The two of you have been sneaking glances at each other for days, not to mention talking each other up to me, as if I didn't know how wonderful you both are already. I figured a little time alone together... well, a long drive with nothing to do but get to know each other better, might just make you see each other without blinders."

"We had blinders?" I asked him, frowning.

"Yep. Jack blinders. You were too busy wondering if I'd mind to ask each other if _you'd_ mind. So... Status report, Officer 566." (1)

"She's lovely, Jack. Very easy to talk to. I haven't talked that much in years!"

"And...?"

"She's an even better kisser than you, Jack. I didn't think that was even possible," Ianto admitted.

Jack made a teasing, frustrated growling sound in his throat. "I'll try not to be offended by that... Officer 000, report."

"There you go with that again," I remarked with a grin. My status of non-existence was a long-standing joke of ours.

"Report," he repeated, smiling nostalgically.

"I didn't know they even made men like Ianto," I told him. "It's so refreshing. He listens, he's chivalrous, he notices _everything_... And he's so strong, Jack. Stoic and brave. I can't believe you almost let him get away!"

"You know my reasons," he said dismissively. "Tell me the rest."

"He could stop traffic, he looks so good in a suit," I stated. "Also... nice rear bumper." I said this last looking Ianto right in the eyes, and he laughed so hard I thought he might fall on said rear bumper.

"You really did grow up with Jack as your verbal role model," he remarked, tears of laughter in his eyes.

"So... How are we playing this? Rules? Rota?"

"No games, Jack. At least not yet," Ianto told him gently.

"We decided we need to get to know each other better before we get to know each other with you," I explained. "So I suppose we'll all be vying for each other's attention for a while, but hopefully we'll arrive at a point where we're all three sharing whatever develops."

"Did I mention she's brilliant?" Ianto inquired.

"No need. I already know. So... the timing is horrific, I'm afraid. But there's nothing I could possibly delegate to either of you at the moment, so you're off for the night. Besides, you both look beat. You could stay here and try to sleep on that back-breaker of a sofa, Sage, get crapped on by Myfanawy in the Hub, hide out in my underground Fortress of Solitude, or go home with Ianto. Your choice."

"I vote home with me," Ianto raised his hand. I raised my eyebrows, impressed at his intrepidness.

"You okay with that, Sage?" Jack asked me.

"Yeah, fine. Although I'll probably just pass out the moment my head touches pillow," I admitted.

"Same," Ianto agreed.

"Mmm. Cuddling. So cute," Jack remarked. "Off you go."

* * *

"Ianto?" I murmured, sitting on the edge of his bed, still dressed like a tax accountant. He had only removed his jacket and was fishing through his dresser for something to sleep in.

"Yes?"

"Come here, please." He frowned, but did as I asked. "Can you unbutton your shirt?"

"Sage..."

"I'm asking if you _can_, Ianto, not asking you to do it," I told him gently. "You've been favouring your left arm all day. Why?"

"I dislocated my shoulder," he admitted, eyes downcast, "and I haven't exactly been resting it."

"In the explosion?" I asked him. "The abandoned factory?" He nodded. "Who fixed it? Was it Jack?" Again that silent nod, as if he was ashamed to be in pain. "But he was in a hurry, wasn't he."

"Toshiko and Owen... were still missing," he explained. I stood and began undoing the buttons on his vest, then loosening his tie. "What are you doing?" he asked me, swallowing hard.

"Shh... Just hold still," I told him, moving on to the buttons of his shirt. "Oh, Ianto... you should have said something," I admonished. His shoulder was a red and purple mess of bruising and swelling. I laid my hands gently on either side of the injured joint, then closed my eyes, allowing part of my strength to flow into him, and taking part of his pain into me.

"What did you just do?" he asked me.

"Did it help?"

"Yes, a little, but— Sage!" he exclaimed as I fell limply against his chest, breathing heavily and very nearly greying out.

"Oh, how could you bear it?" I whispered.

"What have you done?" he asked me, but I think he already knew. He sounded angry.

"I took the pain, didn't I?" I murmured.

"Took it where?" he asked, sitting me down on the bed. I was clutching my left shoulder. He stripped off the jacket I was wearing, the sleeveless top I wore underneath showing him exactly what I had done. My shoulder was nearly as bruised as his. "Don't ever do that again!" he admonished.

"It was my choice," I told him, trying to be firm, but still dizzy from the pain.

"No, Sage. It wasn't," he told me, kneeling before me and steadying me with a hand on my chin so I'd look him in the eyes. "Don't _ever_ do that again," he repeated. He laid me down on the bed, taking off my shoes before bringing my legs up onto the mattress. He took off only his belt and his shoes before climbing into bed beside me.

He didn't say another word about it. Instead he drew me against his side and kissed the crown of my head. "What?" I asked him, noticing that he was sniffing my hair.

"Is that your shampoo or your perfume?" he asked me.

"I don't wear perfume," I told him. "What do you smell?"

"Honey," he said simply. I chuckled. "What?"

"I forgot that's what we smelled like to you," I remarked. "My dad said that's what my mother always said. I heard she was human. British."

"So you're not entirely alien," Ianto ventured.

"Do I _seem_ alien?" I asked him.

"No."

"Then I suppose we're not so different after all," I remarked.

"Except I want to pour you in my tea," he murmured against my hair. I chuckled at that. A few minutes later, he drifted to sleep. It wasn't long before I slept, too.

* * *

1) Once again, I'm assigning a number based on the fact that he was recruited after Harper, O., Officer 565.


	4. Chapter 4

"Miss Jones!" Ianto exclaimed as we walked into the Hub together the next day. "It's nice to see you again."

"Hello, Ianto," the dark girl in the lab coat said, approaching him. "I wish the circumstances were better." She gave him a hug, and even from where I was standing I heard him hiss in pain. "Oh, God, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed, taking a step backward. "I didn't know you were hurt. You should let me have a look at that." At that moment she saw me standing still, watching her intently. "Hello. You must be Sage. Jack said I should expect to meet you. I'm Martha Jones," she said, approaching and extending her hand out to me.

"I know who you are," I told her, shaking her hand. At that moment my shoulder betrayed me and I winced. I had taken on more than I'd expected and was having a hard time so much as lifting my left arm.

"You're hurt, too?" she exclaimed. "Come on, both of you. Check-ups." We followed her obediently. The moment we both had our jackets off and Ianto had removed his shirt, though... She stared. "Identical trauma? That's impossible." I saw her thinking it over, could practically hear the gears turning in her head. "Unless..." A moment later, she was approaching me with her stethoscope. I allowed it. "I knew it!" she exclaimed. "Time Lord! So, how does it work? Some kind of energy transference? Pain is basically an electrical current, right?"

"Now is when you ask me who I am," I told her.

"Is it?"

"You know _what_ I am," I pointed out, "which I figured you would. I told you I know who _you_ are."

"And I know someone who said he was the last of his kind. He wasn't, though. So... Are you an old friend of the Doctor's as well? You're not a friend of the Master or you wouldn't be here."

"Yeah, I'm an old friend," I told her, glad she didn't know what to look for to know I was fibbing. "I haven't seen him in ages. How is he?"

"It's been ages for me, too," she admitted. "But he was fine. Still travelling, as ever." She was in love with him. Her voice had changed for a moment when she said 'fine'. I hated lying to her, but Jack had alluded to Martha's feelings and I hadn't wanted to make her feel odd around me, being the daughter of the man she loved and looking just barely older than she was. Also, since Jack hadn't told her, I guessed he'd been thinking the same. Or leaving the decision to me. Either way, it was done. "So Ianto was injured and you took part of his injury into your own body, am I right?"

"Yep, that's right," I agreed.

"But can't you expel it? The day I met the Doctor I watched him expel radiation out of his body and into his shoe. I thought he was a complete nutter, but it worked."

"I never really... I'm sorry. I'm not exactly a Time Lord," I confessed.

"But you have two hearts," she protested. "I heard them."

"Well, yes. I'm Gallifreyan, and I passed my Initiation, but I was very, very young when the Time War broke out. My training before Initiation was mostly second hand, and I only had a few months of actual training afterward, so I'm sort of... lacking," I explained.

"How old were you?" Martha ventured.

"Eight."

"But the Doctor said... Oh... You'd just passed the test when the war started. I'm _so_ sorry... How did you end up here? Do you have a TARDIS?"

"No, just this," I held up my left hand.

"Whoa. That's a Time Agent Vortex Manipulator! Wow. Does it work? Can you teleport?"

"Yep. No time-hopping, though. That burnt out when I landed," I told her.

"When _did_ you land?" she asked. I noticed she asked when before where. Interesting.

"New Year's Day, 1900."

"Must have been very hard for you, on your own," she remarked, looking at me with the same compassion Jack said she felt toward my father.

"I had Jack. I was all right," I told her.

"He raised you, then? Jack with a daughter..." she mused. "That's _weird_... Why did he never mention you?"

"I was irrelevant at the time."

"What?" She sounded shocked.

"I was human when he met you," I said, tapping the locket I still wore around my neck.

"Oh, it's like that watch thing..." She seemed to finally accept me as I was then and turned back to Ianto. "Dislocated your shoulder, yeah?" He nodded. "How's the pain?"

"Not as bad as it was," he said, giving me a sideways glance as she checked his range of movement.

"He's bigger than you, Sage," Martha pointed out. "Why'd you do it?"

"I love him," I said plainly and without hesitation.

"Whoa. I thought Ianto and Jack—"

"Complicated," Ianto said.

"Very... complicated," I added.

"Right..." Martha mused. "Well! No permanent damage, Ianto. I'll just give you something for the pain. Sage... I like your name, by the way. Wise. Also, a herb. Not pretentious like 'Master'." She rolled her eyes. "How quickly do you heal, Sage?"

"Faster than the average human. About twice as fast, I think."

"Does medicine work on you?" she ventured.

"Oh, yes. Everything but aspirin. I'm allergic to aspirin," I told her. (1)

"Sorted," she declared brightly. Lovely girl, Martha Jones. Beautiful. Kind. Very strong. In some ways she reminded me of Ianto, only more outgoing and confident. I wondered why my father didn't feel the same way about her as she did toward him. I asked Jack, though, and he only said one word in answer: Rose.

* * *

Ianto and I were kissing languidly, his back against the wall and my body pressed against his, when Gwen bustled into the Hub. She stopped short, then called out, "Oi! Jack said there's work to do! This isn't a bloody class picnic."

Ianto looked abashed as we broke off the kiss, but I was a lot older than either of them and had known Jack a hell of a lot longer. "Jack said there's work to do when he gets back," I told her as I turned to face her. "He told us to stay in the Hub."

"Well, I don't think he meant stay in the Hub _snogging_, now did he?"

"Actually," Ianto piped up, "he did. He was very specific about that."

I heard Martha snickering in the medical station. Gwen's eyes shifted in her direction, but she couldn't see her from where she was standing. "Half of Cardiff is in ruins and you two are acting like hormone-driven teenagers!" Gwen exclaimed. "When Jack gets back—"

"He'll have what he told us to wait for," Martha interjected, emerging. "Hello, Gwen. How was the wedding?"

Gwen's eyes were as large as dinner plates. "Martha! Ohmygod, it's so good to see you," she blurted.

"Likewise," Martha said. "And really, we're to wait for Jack. He has something for Sage and he doesn't want her leaving the Hub without it. Ask him yourself."

"No, that's all right," Gwen said, still looking flustered. She approached Martha and whispered, "What's with those two? We've lost Toshiko and Owen and half the city and they're all over each other!"

"Jack said to leave them be," Martha replied, speaking in a gentle tone, but not bothering to whisper. "He said it's very _important_ to leave them be."

"Important that they snog?" Gwen hissed.

"Important that they love each other," Martha told her softly.

"But... Already? _Now_? I don't—"

"Let's just trust that Jack is right, okay?" Martha suggested.

"I'm always right," Jack joked, arriving just then. "Morning, Gwen," he said, kissing her on the cheek as he passed her. "Sage, I come bearing gifts." He kissed me, and then Ianto, tenderly on the forehead, then handed me a stack of ID cards. "Driver's licence, security pass," he told me. "And a few falsies in there, too. I put you as Sage Smith; hope you don't mind."

"Everyone needs a Jones and a Smith," I told him, smiling. When I found my Torchwood pass amongst the fake Police, Health and Safety, etc., I burst out laughing. "Officer 000? Cute, Jack."

"The computer needed a number," he explained, "but when it prints out personnel files, you don't exist. I had Toshiko program it that way a long time ago."

"How did you know I'd do this, Jack?" I asked him.

"I didn't. I only hoped." I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him softly on the lips. "Come on," he told us. "We've got a lot to do today. Ianto, how's the shoulder?"

"Better, Jack," he said stoically, trying not to look at me, but Jack caught his fleeting glance in my direction anyway.

"I asked you not to do that anymore, Sage," he reprimanded me, but it was a very gentle reprimand, and underneath it I knew he was thinking that it was a good sign.

"Do what?" Gwen asked.

"She's an Empathic Healer, Gwen," Martha said, putting it in better terms than I'd ever had for it. "She can absorb other people's injuries, share part or all of the pain. It's amazing, but very risky."

"Risky in what way?"

"She can take on too much if she's not careful," Jack told her. "In 1917 she absorbed the gunshot wound of a field nurse and nearly bled to death."

"I was just trying to take the edge off the pain for her," I said, embarrassed by my ineptitude.

"Why didn't she just regenerate?" Gwen inquired.

"I was unconscious," I admitted. "Re-generation is nearly always a conscious act. It requires a lot of will-power." I saw Martha nodding and knew she was thinking about the Master and his choice to die rather than remain under my father's care and supervision... He'd thought of it as a cage.

"You absorbed Ianto's dislocated shoulder?" Gwen asked me. I was surprised into silence. She so rarely directed her questions about me to me... "You're mad," she stated. "He's bigger than you."

"But it's very romantic," Martha interjected.

"Yes, actually, it is," Gwen agreed, favouring me with a smile. "So, Jack," she then changed her focus of attention, "what are we doing today that we needed 'Sage Smith' for?"

"You, me, Ianto and Martha are going to continue helping with the recovery," he said. "Sage is going to... listen," he concluded, tapping his temple.

"What am I listening for, Jack?" I asked him, but I had a fairly good idea already.

"Potential," he said. "Raw human potential."

* * *

1) Whether or not _all_ Time Lords are sensitive to aspirin is a subject of much debate.


	5. Chapter 5

Martha forced me to put my arm in a sling before we left the Hub. I was reluctant, but she had a good point: people would wonder why I wasn't helping if I was there with Special Ops and just stood there looking blank and useless. My arm _did_ feel a bit better without the weight of it straining at my shoulder, but I hated to admit how much pain I was still in.

Jack gave me one of the enhanced PDAs from storage and told me to jot any details that stood out from the babble I was likely to be bombarded with. "I'm really trusting your feelings, though, Sage," he said, "so mostly use it as a decoy so no one knows what you're really paying attention to."

"Or thinks you're a few cards short of a full deck," Martha teased me. I stuck my tongue out at her, smiling. She was quite a character. It made me wonder even more what this mysterious Rose had been like to have captured my father's attention so completely... Who she was that she had eclipsed the brilliant and beautiful Martha Jones.

I rode in the back, the Smith in a Jones sandwich. Gwen seemed much more in control with Jack at her side; he tempered her temper, so to speak. I was actually missing the frivolous thoughts I had originally disliked about her. Martha seemed very glad to be back with the team, even though she was just on loan to us from UNIT until we could find a new medic with the right sort of mindset and skills. Finding a tech of Toshiko's calibre would be equally difficult, but personally I was more concerned about finding the right doctor. They can be too emotionally invested in their patients or too disconnected; we needed someone who'd found a balance.

We must have looked quite intimidating to the bystanders when we stopped at one of the bomb sites. More than half the workers and assisting laymen looked up at us as we approached, Jack at the centre in his RAF greatcoat, Ianto and Gwen flanking him (in a black suit and black leather, respectively), and myself and Martha (me in a blazer and jeans, she in a white lab coat over a brown leather jacket, her stethoscope around her neck). We were all carrying bags of equipment, even me, most of it for detecting life signs, some of it equipment for the safe disintegration of rubble.

"Who are you lot?" a construction worker asked.

"Special Ops," Jack replied.

"What does that mean; 'special ops'?" the man persisted.

"It means we're here to help," Jack said. "I understand there are several people trapped in the rubble, presumed to be still alive?"

"Yeah, that's right," a different man, average-looking, in jeans and a t-shirt, put in. "We've heard them calling out, but we can't get to them."

"We need an architect," Jack mused. "Someone who knows the weak points and the strong points in the rubble so we don't cause a collapse."

"That's why I'm here," the man said. "I'm an architect. But the machinery's too big to get where we need it, and explosives would do more harm than good."

"Not the kind we have," Jack told him. "They give off very concentrated bursts of sonic pulse. They only break what you aim them at. They're a bit need-to-know, but let's face it... You need to know. What's your name?"

"Charles Finnegan."

"Good to meet you, Charles. I'm Captain Jack Harkness. These are my associates: Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, Sage Smith, and Doctor Martha Jones."

"You really think we can save them?" Charles Finnegan asked, a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

"I _know_ we can, Charles. We have to." Then he turned to us. "Martha, pinpoint their locations for me. Ianto, Gwen, start setting up the equipment. Sage... Get a full assessment of the structure from our friend here."

Each of us set out to do our jobs, but I could hear Jack thinking behind me: _This is all my fault._ I sent him a thought back: _No it's not. __Gray__ made this choice. You've been through many horrors and you're still my Captain. Now quit that line of thinking and __focus__!_

Martha discovered seven life signs in the remains of that particular building, and we used Mr Finnegan's instructions and our specialized equipment to carefully blast our way in. "Who designed these?" I asked Ianto. "Toshiko?" He nodded, smiling a small, sad smile. "I miss her, too," I told him gently. He tipped my chin up and kissed me softly on the lips, sniffling back a few tears when we parted. I looked up and saw Gwen staring at us. She still looked very displeased about the two of us and wasn't bothering to hide it. I went back to my work, and she went back to hers.

We only managed to save five of the seven people in that building. One was crushed by the rubble in spite of our care to avoid such an occurrence. The other simply passed away as Martha was checking her over. She hadn't even really been injured. She'd simply given up.

It was like that in nearly every building. We'd manage to save most, but not all. There was a growing cluster of nurses and doctors around Martha, even a veterinarian, but dedicated as they were to saving lives, and brave as they were demonstrating themselves to be, not one of them stood out to me as having the sort of potential Owen had. The sort that Martha had. I reported this to Jack, as it was long past late.

"Don't worry, Sage," Jack told me gently. "This isn't something that can be rushed. Just listen and report. We just have to keep doing our jobs. Keep what's left of the team together. The right person will probably turn up at the least likely moment, in the most unlikely way... You should go get some rest. We all should. It's too dark and we're too tired to be much good to anyone anymore tonight."

"But the people who are still trapped—"

"They won't be abandoned, Sage. The police are staying with them in shifts. We don't exactly _have_ a second shift. Get Ianto to take you out for a drink or something, then get some sleep," he said.

"Don't you miss him, Jack?" I murmured. "You need him right now."

"And he needs _you_," he told me. "Sage..."

"Yes, Jack?"

"I'm glad to have you back." He held me close for a minute or so, then spoke to the others, telling them to pack up to go back to HQ. They all made the same protests that I had. "You won't be able to help anyone if you work yourselves sick," he pointed out. They grudgingly accepted that he was right, and we returned to the Hub. Martha was staying at a nearby hotel, Gwen went home to Rhys, but Ianto and I lingered with Jack.

"Go home, take a shower, have some beer or a cool glass of champagne," he told us.

"We don't want to leave you on your own, Jack," Ianto voiced, concerned.

He hugged us both, one with each arm, and murmured, "Don't tempt me." Ianto ignored this and kissed him firmly on the mouth. Jack pushed us both gently away. "No, really. Don't tempt me. Go on, you two. De-tox from this. I don't want to see you 'til morning."

I was wearing a sheer blue dress and black heels under my long coat when Ianto emerged from the bathroom in black cotton pants, gloriously shirtless, with his towel draped over his shoulder. He stopped short when he saw me, so I walked the remainder of the way across the room.

"Let me see," I whispered, pulling the towel away. His shoulder was almost completely healed; only a vague discoloration remained. I kissed him there, his shower-damp skin delicious under my tongue. I heard him draw in a shaky breath, but felt him resist, steadying himself.

"How's yours?" he asked me. I pulled my coat back to show him my bare shoulder. It had completely healed. "That's good," Ianto said. "My grandmother had a coat just like yours," he then added. "I've seen it in photos of her. Is it from the 50s?"

"Good eye," I remarked.

"Well, my father was a tailor," he told me. "Jack says I've got the 'family eye'. Anyway... Are you going somewhere?"

"_We're_ going somewhere," I told him. "Get dressed."

"Everywhere's shut down," he reminded me.

"Everywhere in Cardiff," I pointed out, then pushed up my left sleeve, flashing him my wrist strap. "Please, Ianto? Get dressed."

"I never thought I'd be seeing the Eiffel Tower up close," Ianto remarked, laying hand to metal, making sure it was real. "One thousand six hundred and sixty five steps to the top."

"I told you I'd show you a wonder," I whispered to him.

"Come here," he said, clasping my hand and drawing me to the centre of the area beneath the structure. He pressed my body against his own, then kissed me. It was open-mouthed and sensual; not at all what I'd expected. I felt his hands move from my waist up to my breasts and I gasped into his mouth as my nipples hardened against his palms. "Do you have 51st century pheromones?" he gasped hotly into my ear, moving his hands back down to my waist with an effort.

"What?" I chuckled. "No. My pheromones, as far as I know, are on par with 21st century humans. Why do you ask?"

"Because this never happens to me," he admitted. "I took things pretty slowly with Lisa. I resisted Jack for nearly a year. I hardly know you. How have you done this to me?" He was on the verge of tears.

"Ianto... All my life, I never loved anyone but Jack. I'm in uncharted territory myself when I'm with you. The only thing I understand is that I love you. I'm not sure why, or when exactly it happened, but I do."

"I do," he said with a secretive smile.

"Do what?" I pressed, smiling back at him.

"I know when I started falling in love with _you_," Ianto told me. "You were still weak from the effects of the Singularity Scalpel and Jack asked me to hold you in my arms on the sofa. You looked up at me with those lovely grey eyes of yours and smiled. Smiled like you felt completely safe."

"I did," I admitted. "I think that's when I first started loving you, too."

"When you bought that coat, Sage, did you purposely match it to your eyes?" he asked out of pure curiosity.

"No, the shop girl did. But not to my eyes. It's only a shade or two lighter than Jack's coat; she thought we were married and was trying to dress us to match," I explained, rolling my eyes.

"No, it's the colour of your eyes," Ianto countered, smiling. "Is there any place we can go for dinner around here?" he asked me suddenly.

"Sure," I told him. "I was hoping you'd ask. You _do_ look gorgeous in a suit," I said with a wink.

"I might embarrass you with my French, though," he admitted, blushing a bit.

"Oh, no worries," I reassured him. "I lived in Paris once for two years. I speak French fluently."

"When was this?" Ianto asked me as I took his arm and began guiding him away from the Tower.

"From 1938 to 1940. In spite of his protests, though, Torchwood called Jack home. Just as well. His Spanish has always been better than his French anyway. And he neither met himself nor his namesake once back in Britain, at least not then, so we avoided creating a paradox after all," I said casually.

"You stayed in France during the German occupation?" he asked me.

"Better to face the Nazis than a paradox. Trust me," I said.

"What did you see?" he asked me, halting suddenly. "In the Time Vortex... what did you see?"

"I _still_ see it, Ianto," I told him. "The past and the future and the now. My father told me when I was very small that it was like reading a book out of order, with a lot of the pages missing. That was the best analogy I ever heard for it."

"Are you ever tempted to tell people things about the future? To avoid catastrophes?"

"I can't. I can't change things. Jack says some points in time are mutable and some are fixed. The sinking of the Titanic, the attacks on the World Trade Centre... those things are fixed points in time. Small things, like saving a few more citizens of Cardiff that would have died without us... most of those are mutable, but not all," I attempted to explain.

"They say Hitler had a dream, a prophetic dream, that saved his life when he was a very young soldier. Are you sure that wasn't..."

"A Time Lord meddling?" I scoffed. "I doubt _that_. World War II is a fixed point, like the American Revolution or the destruction of Pompeii. (1) Time Lords can't just swan in and cause catastrophes any more than we can prevent them. At least when we still had the laws of our society, that's what we were taught. You observe, you keep outside interference to a minimum, and you keep your mouth shut. I know my father still follows the rules or he'd have tried to save Gallifrey, universe be damned."

"What about Time Agents?" he asked me. "Jack never explained."

I smirked a bit. I couldn't help it. "It's almost like comparing a mall security guard to a CIA operative, Ianto," I explained, "but don't tell Jack I said that." He chuckled, but made no promises. "Look... I see things differently than Jack does, but we follow the same rules. When you get down to brass tacks, Jack has more experience. Overall, he's my superior. That's why I tend to advise him but not 'Lord' it over him, if you'll pardon the pun. My dad, though... Jack says he generally treats him like a rebellious teenager." Ianto laughed out loud at that. "Let's get dinner before I change my mind and do something stupid right here on the street corner," I told him, grabbing his hand and hurrying him across the street.

"Stupid like what?"

* * *

1) The Doctor actually _did_ cause the destruction of Pompeii, saving the world from the Pyrovile. (New Series 4, episode 2.)


	6. Chapter 6

I was once again yanking Ianto's tie loose, opening his shirt. I was desperate to touch every inch of him that I possibly could. We'd barely gotten through dinner. He'd been staring at me intently with those intense green eyes of his ever since I'd said "Stupid like a hormone-driven teenager at a drive-in." He asked. I answered. He stared.

Ianto staring at me that way, even as we ate, was one of the most erotic experiences of my life up until then. When we left the restaurant, he'd pinned me against an alley wall and whispered that we needed to get back to his place immediately. "Before I do something that'll get us both arrested," he'd said.

I was dipping my tongue into the hollow at the base of his throat when my cell phone rang. I turned it off without looking at it and tossed it aside. A moment later, Ianto's mobile rang as well. "Fuck!" I blurted, knowing it had to be work.

Ianto laid a hand on my cheek, his thumb across my lips, as he answered the call. "Yes, Jack? No, we were out of range. Very... out of range," he somehow managed to say as I drew his thumb into my mouth. "She what?! ... Yes, Jack. We'll be there in a minute." As soon as he'd hung up he broke the news to me. "Owen's mother found us. Jack wants you to speak with her."

"Fucking hell," I said sullenly, allowing myself to collapse into a heap on the bed.

"I know," Ianto groaned. "Come on. We'll have to teleport over. She's smashing up the place."

I had to straighten out my bra and put my coat back on. Ianto looked down at himself and decided that leaving his shirttails out was the better idea. He did up a few buttons but left his tie draped over his neck and his hair mussed. "You're so beautiful right now," I murmured to him, giving him a small peck on the lips. He smiled that small, sweet smile of his, I wrapped my arms around his waist, and teleported us into his fake information booth back at the Hub. From the sounds within, he hadn't been exaggerating.

* * *

"I want to see my son!" I heard Mrs Harper shouting in Jack's office from all the way over in Ianto's. We didn't hear Jack's response, but whatever it was, it caused her to smash something else. Ianto and I took off at a run, arriving just in time for him to grab Owen's mother and stop her from stabbing Jack with his own letter opener.

"Mrs Harper," I said to her softly as she was shrieking and trying to fight off the man who was trying to help her. "Mrs Harper, do you remember me?"

"You!" she screamed at me. "You liar! I came to see if there would be a memorial service for my son, since _you_ said he'd be _sorely missed_, but you never told me he was no longer working at Cardiff A&E. I go there and no one remembers a Doctor Owen Harper, so I show them a photo and they say Special Ops! I go to the police and they say Torchwood! I ask who's Torchwood? Oh, these blokes who go swanning about acting like they own Cardiff, they said. Full of themselves, Torchwood. Everything strange in Cardiff can be traced to Torchwood, they said. I had to talk to fifty different people to find you lot, and I'm _not happy_! Now if the story you told me about how he died was a lie, missy, then where is my son?"

"Mrs Harper—" Jack began, but she cut him off.

"I have heard enough from _you_, sir. I want _her_ to explain this to me," she said firmly, pointing at me with the letter opener, not even feeling Ianto's arms on hers anymore.

"Mrs Harper," I told her gently, "I'm afraid that your son truly _is_ dead."

"Where is he, then? Why won't this man let me see his body? If my son is dead, why can't I say goodbye?" She sounded more distraught than angry at that point, so I gently took the letter opener from her hand and passed it to Jack, never taking my eyes from hers.

"Your son died containing the meltdown of the Turnmill Nuclear Power Station," I told her honestly. "There are no remains for you to see. I'm very sorry, Mrs Harper. More than I could ever say."

"Nuclear... What did Owen know about things like that?"

"Our colleague, Miss Sato, was injured and unable to get to Turnmill to contain the meltdown. She talked Owen through the procedure from here, but an unexpected power spike sealed off the room where Owen was working and he was trapped. There was nothing we could do," I told her gently.

"Where is this Sato? I want to speak to her."

"She died as well, ma'am," I said.

"Liar," she spat. "I want to speak to her."

"I'm not lying to you. I swear."

"Yes you are! Where is my son?!" she shouted.

"Ianto," I said over her shoulder. "Call up the CCTV footage of those last few minutes of the Turnmill incident for me, please." He looked to Jack, who nodded. Ianto went to Jack's computer and brought up the footage, making sure not to leave in anything from before or after... only what Mrs Harper needed to see, which was basically Toshiko bleeding to death. Owen could only be heard, not seen. Mrs Harper jumped when Owen started raving about not wanting everything to end that way.

"This is a lie," she said. "I don't believe any part of it. It's fabricated. Turn it off."

Jack was more than glad to oblige. He handed her a glass of water. Less than a minute later she fell limply into his arms. He set her down in his chair. "Three days," he said to my inquiring look. "She'll never believe the truth. Perhaps it's best if she simply continues to believe he's alive and hates him at her leisure. The problem will be getting her back to London."

"Here," I handed Jack my wrist strap. "Drop us back at the flat, drive her to London, teleport back," I told him.

"I could do it," Ianto offered.

"You need rest, Ianto," Jack pointed out, "and I obviously interrupted something. Something very exciting from the look of you both, and I really am sorry for spoiling your fun. Now where were you that was out of range, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Paris," Ianto admitted with a small, naughty smile.

"Flashy, Sage," Jack remarked. "Nice one. Now come here, you two. This marvellous example of motherhood drives a two-seater, but Sage's magic carpet can easily accommodate three. I'll take you home."

"Too bad it can't handle a car," I put in.

"Well, mine wouldn't be able to, either," he admitted. "Size doesn't _always_ matter, Ianto," he said to our dear friend's quizzical look. "Let's go."

Jack took us back to Ianto's in a two-armed hug, then kissed us each on the lips. "I really _am_ sorry for interrupting," he said before leaving.

* * *

"I don't suppose we could..." I ventured once we were alone.

"Start where we left off?" Ianto finished for me. "I don't think I can... Owen's voice," he murmured, then gasped, "I can't."

I nodded. He was right. I could still see Toshiko with a lapful of blood. "Hold me, then, Ianto," I whispered.

He kissed me softly on the lips, slipping my coat off of my shoulders, unzipping the back of my dress and allowing it to slip to the floor. "When did you get that?" he asked me of a small butterfly I'd had tattooed just above my left hipbone.

"In 1969. Just before Woodstock. Man... _that_ was a party," I told him. "I like this one better, though," I told him, kicking off my heels and sitting on the bed to roll down my stockings. They were thigh-his; an old school habit I couldn't seem to break. "Here," I said, showing him a small dragon on my right ankle. It was a tribal design, and from a distance most people mistook it for a rose. Ianto took the up close approach, though.

"I thought it was a flower," he admitted before planting a gentle kiss upon it. "When is that one from?"

"1999. I didn't get to enjoy it for very long, though. John Hart can be _such_ a bastard."

"I figured it was him who blinded you," Ianto told me, standing back up to take off his shirt.

"How did you know?"

"Just a feeling," he shrugged. "Jealous of Jack, was he? Trying to get him for himself?" I nodded. "What about the wrist strap, Sage? It was his when he was a boy, wasn't it."

"Now how do you know _that_?" I pressed, surprised.

"Jack said you were not supposed to have one. Only a rebel would have given you one," he stated, shrugging again.

"He was my very best friend," I admitted. "He was always hopping over to Gallifrey in secret. The last time I saw him before the War, he gave me the Vortex Manipulator and told me to go see him at the Time Agency. I never had the chance."

"Did he know the war was coming?" Ianto ventured as he kicked off his own shoes and unbuckled his belt.

"He says he didn't. I asked him and he told me it was a lark; he only gave it to me because it was against the rules," I told him.

"Do you believe him?" he asked me as he gathered up our scattered clothes and draped them over a chair.

"Yeah, I do. He's a liar, sure, but he's always honest about one thing," I said.

"Which is...?"

"Taking credit for his misdeeds." Ianto pondered this, then nodded. He took off his pants and socks as he did so, then looked up to find me staring.

"What?"

"You, Ianto Jones," I murmured. "So quiet, such dry wit, and behind it... so sensitive, so attentive. Underneath that, though, there's a third layer... passion, anger... and an innate sensuality I'm not sure you're even aware of."

"I am," he told me, smirking. "You know what I like best about you, Sage?" he ventured. I shook my head. "You notice things most people can't fathom. And you know that I do, too. You appreciate that I empty everyone's pockets before sending out the dry cleaning. You don't just take it for granted that I will, or not even notice that I do it. I put the same wrapped mint back into Owen's lab coat pocket for three months once," he said with a chuckle, "and when he finally found it he just put it in his mouth, never wondering whether it had been dry-cleaned or what it was still doing in there."

"That's my favourite thing about _you_, Ianto," I admitted. "You notice everything. You intuit people's needs. You never ask for credit... You do get a bit cranky if enough time goes by without a 'thank you', though," I pointed out with a wink. "Thank you for picking up my clothes, Ianto," I told him softly. "Now please come to bed. You look twice as tired as I feel, and that's a lot." He switched off the light and climbed into bed with me. It was lovely to feel his warm, bare flesh against mine. I buried my face in the downy bit of hair on his chest, inhaling his scent. Even after many hours and a shower, he still smelled just a bit like coffee. "Ianto?"

"Yes, Sage?"

"Did you know your name means 'Gift of God'?"


	7. Chapter 7

"Thanks for the loan," Jack said, handing me back my wrist strap the next morning.

"My pleasure, Jack. Any trouble with the delivery?" I inquired.

"None. She may or may not regain those memories someday, though. Don't be overly surprised if she finds us again."

"Who?" Martha inquired, sipping her coffee as we were walking out to the SUV.

"We had to Retcon Owen's mother last night," I admitted.

"Owen's mother found the Hub?" Gwen voiced incredulously. "How does that even happen?"

"Apparently the Cardiff Police told her we 'swan about'," Ianto remarked.

"So much for secrecy," Gwen muttered.

"Your coffee smells different from mine," Martha told me as she climbed in next to me. "I thought we were coffee twins."

"Sage takes a teaspoon of chocolate syrup in hers," Ianto explained.

"I'd have thought that would offend the coffee gods," Martha remarked. "You're the one who told me the exact proportions of each ingredient and explained _cappuccino chiaro_ and_ cappuccino scuro_."

"I caught her dipping her finger in the syrup," he told her, shrugging, making me blush. "I figured I'd give her what she wants and save her the trouble."

"And the embarrassment," I said wryly. "Thank you, Ianto."

"Some rules, under certain circumstances, should be broken," he said casually. His hand on my thigh, though, was anything but casual.

"Do you two need a room?" Martha whispered in my ear.

"Every time we get one, it's coitus interruptus," I whispered back.

"Yeah, barmy mums must be _mad_ for the sex drive," she returned, then snorted laughter.

Ianto leaned past me to wink at Martha, a finger across his lips, then proceeded to kiss me quite thoroughly, nearly causing me to spill my coffee. Martha plucked it from my fingers and set it in the nearest cup holder, then simply sat back and watched Ianto kiss me like it was an especially good soap opera she'd never expected to see. I plunged both of my hands into Ianto's hair, a whimper of pleasure escaping my throat. Jack glanced up at us in the mirror and grinned salaciously. Gwen turned to look at us and was momentarily dumbstruck.

"Have you gone mad?" she asked us, but we didn't reply.

"I wonder how long before they come up for air," Martha mused aloud.

"Oi!" Gwen shouted. Ianto turned toward her with fire in his eyes, and she jumped back and away from him.

"Gwen," Jack murmured, "I asked you to leave them alone. Now I'm _telling_ you. Leave them alone."

"But _why_, Jack?" she questioned him as Ianto and I were catching our breath and Martha was still watching us with a daffy grin on her face. "What's so important about these two's hormones? It's going to get in the way of work!"

"Gwen, how are you keeping it together right now? Who's helping you cope?" he asked her.

"Well, Rhys," she said. "And you."

"Right. Martha, how do you cope with the things you see at work?"

"Well, I have a boyfriend, don't I," she replied.

"Who does Ianto have?" he asked Gwen.

"You." Not a moment's hesitation.

"And Sage; who does she have?"

"Well, you, I suppose," she replied grudgingly.

"Are they supposed to fight each other for my attention?" he asked her.

"Well, no… Jack," she said, something dawning on her. "Are you saying all three of you…?"

"I'm saying it's easier to share someone you love with someone you love," he told her. "It started happening long before I noticed, and when I did, I decided to encourage it rather than be jealous."

"I don't know what to say to that," she admitted.

"So don't. Leave them be. Let them love each other. Love is the most precious thing we have left," he said.

"That looks like lust to me, Jack, not love."

"Well, that, too," he agreed. "But you must admit, a good endorphin rush is very healthy."

"Spiked with caffeine," I put in.

"And chocolate syrup," Martha added.

Ianto simply smiled a knowing smile.

* * *

"So what's he like?" Martha whispered to me as we were setting up equipment together.

"I don't know yet," I admitted. "We haven't gotten past second base."

"Well, how's his second base?"

"Devastating," I admitted. "He throws all my walls down. Opens doors inside my mind I didn't know existed."

"I always sort of expected him to be all prim and gentlemanly," Martha shrugged.

"He is," I assured her. "It's just he's got this wild streak… Sometimes he seems to be afraid of it."

"Are you?" she pressed.

"Am I what?"

"Afraid."

"Of Ianto?" I blurted. "No, never. I like his wild streak," I admitted. "Who's that tubby guy with Gwen?" I asked her.

"Ah, that's Rhys," Martha informed me. "I haven't met him yet, but I saw the wedding photos."

"He must be a _really_ nice guy," I murmured, rather unkindly.

"Yeah, I guess so. Let's go find out," she suggested. "I'm curious as you are, trust me." We walked right up to Gwen's husband mere moments after Gwen herself had wandered off to help Jack with something. "Hi, I'm Martha. You must be Rhys."

"I am," he said. "Good to meet ye. Are ye the doctor?"

"Yeah, that's me. This is Sage," she introduced me.

I reached out my hand. Rhys hesitated for a moment before taking it. "I don't bite," I tried to reassure him, but he was frowning at me, looking bewildered. "Problem?"

"Sorry," he apologized, snapping out of it and clasping my hand. "Didn't mean to stare. I just expected you to be different."

"Blonde? Taller?" I suggested, teasing.

"Blue?" Martha suggested. At that Rhys cracked up and relaxed.

"Sorry; I'm still getting used to all of this. Good to meet ye, Sage," he said.

"Jack tells me you're in transport," I told him.

"Manager of Harwood's Haulage," he said with a degree of pride. "Not very exciting, but…"

"Your knowledge of traffic and transport routes has proven invaluable to Jack," I told him. "He doesn't always do thank yous very well, but he did tell me that," I said with a smile. "Well, Martha and I have some scans to run, and I expect Jack will have you on your toes pretty soon. It's been a pleasure meeting you, Rhys Williams."

"The pleasure is mine, ladies."

When Martha and I were on our own again, she said, "So?"

"He has very kind eyes," I evaded.

"And???"

"He loves her," I told her. "He _completely_ loves her. But he's afraid of losing her to Jack. He was thinking just now how glad he is we're pretty. He hopes we'll distract Jack from Gwen. Wish I could have told him not to worry," I sighed.

"Poor sod," Martha murmured. "He really does seem like a nice guy. Average, but nice."

"What's your boyfriend like?" I ventured.

"Fiancée, actually," she corrected me, showing me her ring. "Tom Milligan. (1) He's a geek," she admitted. "Good-looking one, but still a geek. He's a doctor as well, so at least we can sort of talk about work to each other. I really don't like keeping secrets from him."

"A doctor?" I ventured. It hadn't been all that long since she'd been with _my_ Doctor, and here she was wearing an engagement ring.

"Paediatrician, actually. But I can't talk to him about _so much_ of what I've seen, and I can't mention Torchwood. For the most part it's all right, though. He's always there when I need him. Dependable," she said, but she sounded like she was trying to convince _herself_, not me.

"So, have we got anyone in this building?" I asked her. "Police said they heard someone earlier, around midnight."

"No, sorry," she reported. "If there was someone, we're too late. I hate this part of the job. The failing part," she admitted.

"You saved twenty-two people yesterday, Martha Jones, one of them carrying little twenty-three in her belly," I reminded her. "That sounds like winning to me."

"I'd love to agree with you, Sage, but I can't," she told me gently, sadly.

"Let's find someone we can help, then," I told her. We walked together for a bit as she ran her scans, but didn't find anyone for several buildings. "Jack," I said via comms, "Martha and I have found one survivor, building seventeen of Grid B. Life signs are very faint."

"Sorry, girls, you'll have to leave them," Jack replied, network-wide.

"But Jack—" Martha began to protest.

"We've got three in building two of Grid C. We were able to speak to one of them and he says his daughter is going into septic shock. I need you girls _now_."

"Jack, we're at _seventeen_," I pointed out.

"So hide behind something and teleport over to the SUV; it's still parked at 1B," he told me.

"On it," I replied. "Come on. We've got to do a bit of a jump and pray no one sees us."

When we arrived at 2C at a run, I saw Ianto sitting upon the rubble, holding a young girl's hand that was poking out through a small gap. He had dressed down that day, jeans and a leather jacket like Gwen, but he still looked very poised and proper, even with cement dust on his cheek.

"Is that the girl?" Martha asked him. He nodded, but didn't move out of the way as Martha clambered up to where he was to check the girl's pulse. "Oh, no… She's in trouble. What did her father say happened?"

"Construction beam through her thigh. She's pinned," Ianto said.

"Damn. We'll need a blowtorch."

"That'd heat the metal," I pointed out. "I can sort it with this," I said, holding up my Sonic Penlight, "but I need to get in there."

"Sonic _Penlight_?" Martha inquired. "You're as weird as the Doctor!"

"Thanks," I said, not knowing or caring whether or not she was making fun of me. "Move aside, please, Martha." I set up one of Tosh's little sonic detonators. "Ianto, you should move away."

"I can't, Sage," he told me. "She's terrified."

I nodded, kissing him gently on the lips. "Cover your eyes, sweetheart. What's the girl's name?"

"Julia," he told me, then raised his hand to the level of his eyes.

"Julia? Can you hear me?"

"Yes," she replied weakly.

"I'm Sage, a friend of Ianto's. You're going to hear a strange sound in a moment. Close your eyes, keep holding Ianto's hand, and you'll be just fine," I told her.

"All right," she replied.

I set the timer on the detonator, then shielded Ianto's body with my own. I was pelted by tiny bits of concrete. A lot of them stung, but only one cut me, on the back of my hand.

"Stop doing that," Ianto reprimanded me for having put myself in danger for his sake yet again, but then he took my hand and kissed away the small trickle of blood. I wiped the concrete dust from his face before slipping in through the opening I had made.

"Hi," I said to the man crouched beside the girl who had most of a construction beam jutting from her leg. "I'm Sage. What's your name, sir?"

"John," he said.

"That's my father's name," (2) I told him, smiling reassuringly. "I'm going to need you to prop her up, John, so that I can cut away the beam from underneath." He did as I instructed, lifting her off the floor carefully. She whimpered, squeezing Ianto's hand tightly. "Close your eyes," I told them both. "It's bright." I cut away the upper part of the metal rod, and then the lower part, freeing her. "Ianto, take her by the shoulders," I said, stowing my Penlight. "John, take her legs. It's a bit tight, but we're going to get you out." We did indeed get her and her father out. At that point the responsibility for them passed to Martha. "You're the sweetest man I've ever known," I told Ianto frankly. He smiled. I went back to scanning the building. "Wait a minute. That's not a human life sign," I muttered. "Jack," I said into comms. "Life sign #3 is a Weevil. Your call."

"Leave him," he instructed. "He'll either find his way out or he won't. Got two life signs at building five."

"On our way, Jack," Ianto told him.

The entire day passed in this fashion. I listened and listened for someone, anyone, who could compliment our team; we couldn't keep Martha forever, after all; but no one came anywhere near being remarkable other than us. We saved fifteen people that day, but lost twelve. It was getting to be too late for the survivors to survive.

The last person whose death we witnessed that day was a little girl not much older than I had been when I first came here. She was dying of dehydration and I reached out to touch her, to try to help her, but someone grabbed my wrist tightly and held me back. I was shocked to discover it was Gwen.

"No," she said, firmly but gently, tears in her eyes. "She's too far gone. You can't help her."

"She's right, Sage," Martha agreed. "She's got minutes at most."

"Let me hold her hand," I pleaded. "I promise I won't do anything. I'll just hold her hand."

Gwen let me go and I went to her. The little girl's eyes fluttered open as my fingers touched hers. "Are you an angel?" she asked me.

"No, sweetheart." I don't know why she thought that. I was wearing jeans and a blue sweater that was quite grimy with concrete dust and even a bit of someone's blood.

"Is _he_ one?" she asked me. It was Jack she meant. I didn't even have to turn to know.

"Yes, love. He's an angel," I told her, tears springing to my eyes.

Jack went to the little girl and put his hand on her forehead. "What's your name?" he asked her.

"Annie," she said softly. "Am I dying?"

"Yes, Annie. I'm sorry," he murmured. "I would save you if I could."

"It's all right," she whispered. "Mum and Dad will be waiting." Jack didn't tell her the truth. He'd been dead millions of times by then and knew what was on the other side: darkness. You don't get reunited. You simply exist in the dark. "I feel sleepy," she whispered.

"Close your eyes," Jack told her. She did. Mere moments later her hand went limp and fell from mine.

"I want to go home, Jack," I said. It was still light out, barely twilight, but Jack agreed. The death of a child was the epitome of devastation.

* * *

1) Amended April 27, 2008 to incorporate new information from "The Sontaran Stratagem". Thomas Milligan is the pediatrician/resistance fighter who takes a bullet for Martha in "Last of the Time Lords". She made a reference to him in the Torchwood episode "Dead Man Walking"; Owen pointed out he'd saved her life & asked if her boyfriend could say the same. She said that actually he could. Interestingly, though, due to the reversal of the paradox, Tom Milligan himself is not aware of this.

2) Reference to the alias most commonly used by the Doctor, John Smith, not an admission to his real name.


	8. Chapter 8

Ianto and I spent part of the evening at the Hub in his mock office. Most of the roads in and out of Cardiff were clear by then. We weren't expecting tourists, but people from all over the UK were coming to assist the community and it was fair to assume some might come our way looking for maps and information.

He was already wearing a suit again; my favourite with the red shirt and the red and black striped tie. I had changed into a leotard and black leggings, my hair pulled back, and was practicing ballet to a recording of Chopin (1) in the room next to where he was.

"Where did you train?" Ianto asked me after he'd been watching me for a while.

"Russia," I told him, not stopping. "Why?"

"Just curious," he replied. "Were you ever in a travelling show or a circus?"

"Yeah, with Jack," I replied. "High-wires and the trapeze were my specialty, but I was a contortionist with one troupe. There were these twin acrobats I worked with, and—"

"They fought constantly," Ianto finished for me.

"Oh, Jack told you?"

"I've seen them on an old film. Jack, too. He says he was billed as the man who couldn't die."

"I hated that," I admitted, finally pausing, leaning in Ianto's doorway. "Watching him kill himself several times a night was horrible. The crowds _loved_ it, though, so he kept doing it. He was on assignment, so he had to."

"The Night Travellers," he murmured. I blanched and nearly fell. If Ianto hadn't moved as fast as he did, I would have landed on the floor in an unlovely heap. "Sage!" he cried out. "Sage, look at me. Are you all right?" I'd gone cold and clammy.

"Are they back?" I whispered, looking fearfully into his eyes.

"They were," he told me. "Jack stopped them. This time, at any rate."

"How did they get here this time?"

"Through the film. They found a way to come back through the film."

"They'll never stop," I sighed.

"Hello?" a voice called out. We hadn't heard the bell on the door ring over my Chopin. Ianto helped me straighten up and we found ourselves facing a pretty blonde girl in a business suit. "Oh, goodness!" she cried out, instantly noting my pallor. "Are you all right, Miss?"

"Yeah, sorry," I replied. "Took a bit of a tumble," I lied. Ianto sat me in his chair and excused himself to turn off my radio. "May I help you?" I inquired.

"I've come from London to have a look at the servers; I'm in IT, thought I might be able to help; but with all the detours I can't find the central server building," she told me. "A bit embarrassing, really," she added in a whisper. I smiled. "Anyway, I was wondering if you could give me a map so I could get my bearings."

"What's your name, Miss?" Ianto asked her.

"Laura Harding," she said.

"Ianto Jones," he shook her hand, "and this is Sage Smith."

"Pleasure," she said, smiling at Ianto, but gazing at me with far more interest. "So... map?"

"A map won't help you much, I'm afraid," Ianto told her. "The server building was one of the first they hit, and they hit it hard. It's near impossible to get in there." We watched her put the heel of her hand to her forehead in frustration. "We could take you, though," he offered.

Her entire face lit up and she looked all of sixteen. "Really? That's incredibly nice of you! You won't get into trouble for leaving the office?"

"I'll just phone my boss and let him know," Ianto said. "We don't exactly have heavy tourist traffic at the moment here in Cardiff," he pointed out. "Sage, put something on over that and come with us," he told me. _Jack will want to know about this girl_, he thought at me hard. _I'll need your help._ I nodded and went to pull on some jeans and my blazer over the leotard and to trade my pointe shoes for flats. "Jack," Ianto said into the phone, "I have a Miss Laura Harding here. She requires assistance in finding the main server building, so we're going to take her over. Is that all right?... Yes, she's here. I'm going to take her along... I will, sir. Thank you. See you tomorrow, then." Ianto hung up and caught Laura giving him a curious look. "Something wrong?" he asked her.

"Your boss lets your girlfriend hang around the office in her leotard?" she asked conspiratorially, not knowing that I could hear her thoughts as well as her words even with the door closed.

"She's his sister," he lied. Well, fibbed. It was almost true. I came out of the side room a moment later, my hair down and looking far more professional, and noticed Laura doing a double-take.

"Ready," I told Ianto. "I'll ride in the back."

* * *

"It's a disaster in there," Ianto remarked as we approached the server building.

"You've been in?" Laura inquired, sounding perplexed.

"I work in IT," I told her, which was sort of true. I _was_ rather good with computers. "I tried to help, but it was a bit over my head."

"I see," she remarked. "And here I thought you were an out-of-place ballerina," she joked.

"That too," I agreed. _How can anyone keep up with this girl?_ she wondered. _She's amazing! Beautiful, too. I wonder why she's wasting her time with a desk jockey... Well, he __is__ good-looking... Pity she's straight._ I had a minor struggle with a laugh that threatened to escape at that last bit I'd caught. We walked up to the main entrance. Since I'd said I was IT, Ianto allowed me to take the lead. I made sure I was a bit ahead of Laura and Ianto when I flashed my ID card at security and murmured "Torchwood." He straightened up right quick and opened the door for us.

"Wow, your girlfriend's intimidating," Laura whispered to Ianto as they followed me in.

"The lifts aren't working yet," Ianto told her. "The worst of the damage is on three, though," he said apologetically. "Not too bad a climb." She didn't know he'd gotten this information from Jack, who was listening in via our comms devices. "May I carry your briefcase for you, Miss Harding?"

"Laura, please," she said, "and thank you. I'd appreciate it." _Wow_, she thought, _I'd be tempted to go straight for a man like him. Mystery solved._

"Which company do you work for?" I asked her, even though Jack had already looked her up.

"Bakersfield and Price," she told me. _It's beneath me, but I'm twenty-four and a woman_, she thought. "It's a small firm, but growing. I hope. You?"

"Between firms at the moment," I told her. "Personal reasons. Mostly freelance for the interim."

"Are you American?" she finally asked me. "There's a hint of a Welsh accent, like you've lived here a while, but you sound American."

I nodded, which wasn't really a reply. "You sound like a Bristol girl to me. Am I right?"

"Spot on!" Laura exclaimed, impressed. As she should have been; that was my ear, not Jack, that had discovered that particular bit of information. "You _have_ been in Britain a while," she remarked.

"I finished university here," I lied. "My brother is in tourism. Manages hotels and such all over Wales, but mainly in Cardiff."

"He must have taken quite a blow in the bombings," Laura remarked softly.

"Yeah, he did," I admitted. "We lost some good people."

"Oh, I'm _so_ sorry," she apologized, embarrassed for not having thought of the personal side until that moment.

"Thank you," I said gently, giving her shoulder a light squeeze. It was easy to forget about the personal side of disasters when you weren't there to experience them. "Here we are. Third floor."

"Whoa... Still smells of burnt wiring in here," she voiced when we entered the hallway.

"Ianto," I murmured, smelling something else in the room behind me. He gave me an inquiring look. _Weevil_, I sent. _In 302, behind me. Are you armed?_

_Always_, he sent back. "Yes, Sage?" he said aloud.

"Would you be a love and get us some iced tea or something? I'm parched."

"Not a problem," he replied. "I'm sure there are vending machines somewhere on this level. You girls go on ahead." He handed Laura her briefcase and waited until we'd stepped into 301 before slipping into 302 and drawing his gun and his anti-Weevil spray. I prayed that he'd be able to handle it on his own.

"Is it diabetes?" Laura asked me.

"Pardon?"

"You've gone pale again," she told me.

"Oh... No, I just thought I smelled rodents for a moment there. They've been crawling up from the sewers and into the buildings since the bombings." This statement was carefully worded so that Jack would understand what I'd sent Ianto off for if he hadn't been able to tell him himself. "Any particular server you're interested in?" I changed the subject.

"Cardiff A&E. They've got back electricity, but their entire database is still down. It's not an on-site issue; it's something wrong here. Do you know if we're in the right room?"

"Yeah, it's the last one on the right," I relayed what Jack told me.

"Ianto's fine," he said softly in my ear as we walked, Laura's shoes making far less noise than I'd expected from the look of them. "It was a very young Weevil. He's already got it subdued and tied up. I'll nip by and get it out of there before it draws any of its relatives. He says expect iced tea in about a minute; the first two vending machines were burnt out."

"I like your shoes," I said casually to Laura. "I can't imagine tromping all through the wreckage of Cardiff in them, though."

"Oh, they're very comfortable, actually," she told me. "Rubber soles. I wouldn't even be wearing anything this nice except that white trainers don't go well with black slacks." (2) I snickered at that, then we both burst out laughing.

"Sorry that I took so long," Ianto said, re-appearing just as our laughter had dwindled and Laura was giving me an oddly intimate look. "The first two vending machines I tried had shorted. I've got iced tea, some sort of energy drink, and water," he listed off for us as he set the bottles down on the table behind us, next to Laura's briefcase. It looked to me like he'd grabbed three of everything.

"Iced tea, please," Laura and I said simultaneously, then burst out laughing again.

Ianto raised an eyebrow at me, then opened a bottle for each of us, taking a bottle of water for himself. _She thinks I'm sexy, Ianto, sorry_, I sent him.

_I do, too_, he sent back, then brushed my hair back from my face to kiss me just below my left earlobe. "Any idea what the trouble is?" he asked Laura, perfectly calm as I stood there blushing.

"Melted wiring," she said immediately. "I can't imagine what could have possibly been more important than the hospital's database."

"The people trapped in the rubble," Ianto said with a shrug. "Most every able-bodied citizen has been out there every day."

"You as well?" she asked him.

He nodded. "Both of us."

"Ballerinas hauling rubble?" she asked quizzically, eyeing my slender body.

"I'm stronger than I look," I told her, drinking my tea. "It's too late for most of them now, though. I expect those of us left will all be returning to our day jobs."

"What did you see?" she asked me.

"What?"

"You look like you're about to cry," she pointed out gently. "What did you see today that you keep going over pale? I didn't believe that bit about rodents for a second."

"I watched a little girl die of thirst," I told her flatly, "and I couldn't save her." I took another sip of my iced tea and grimaced. "And here I am with my iced tea like nothing's wrong in the world," I said, reaching for the bottle cap and setting the drink aside.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Death is part of life," I said philosophically, wiping away a traitor tear. "We need about forty metres of CAT-6 cabling and a new power cord to do this right. Now, I know you don't have that much cabling in that case of yours, so what _do_ you have?"

"Two TIA cables. Ten metres apiece, of course. We'll have to borrow a power cable off someone else. Think we can manage with that much?" she ventured. I knew she knew we could. She wanted to see if I knew.

"If we split them in half, yeah. Sorted."

"What's a TIA cable?" Ianto whispered.

"Telecommunications cabling, Ianto. Commercial server standard. Basically we've got enough to run a patch. Well, several. Not ideal, but it'll do in a pinch," I told him. "Who sent you, Laura?" I asked her. She bit her bottom lip and looked away. "That's what I thought. Are you going to get in trouble for the missing supplies come morning?"

"They don't keep proper inventory," she murmured. "I can write it off as having been used on another job."

"And that's why you only brought patching cables isn't it. You knew full well you'd be putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. Why did you come?" I pressed.

"I heard the hospital was still down. The police already have their server up, and someone fixed television, God knows why, but not the hospital. You need your hospital," she said simply.

"So you drove from London with smuggled cabling to give us back our medical records server. I'm impressed. Jack," I said, raising my voice, "are _you_ impressed?"

"Are you kidding?" Jack called from the hallway. "I'd be applauding if my hands weren't full. Ianto, can you help me with this? He's getting lively again and I can't reach the sedative."

"On it," Ianto replied, drawing his gun as he stepped out to the hall.

"Who the hell _are_ you?" Laura asked me, wide-eyed.

"Torchwood," I told her.

"Cybermen and giant lasers and all the A-positives on rooftops Torchwood?" she asked me, taking two steps away from me.

"That was Canary Wharf," I told her. "Torchwood One. We're Torchwood Three. I suppose you could call us renegades. We never kill unless it's kill-or-be-killed, and we don't fuck with transcendental rifts in space and time. The rifts fuck with us; we just fight back and protect whomever we can."

"You've been lying to me all evening," she pointed out.

"Only sixty/forty," I told her.

"Sixty percent _lies_?"

"Sixty percent truth," I amended.

"That man in the hall, the other American... Jack... Is he really your brother?"

"No," I admitted. "He raised me. He looks much younger than he is, though; we both do; so it's easier to say he's my brother."

"How old _are_ you?"

"You don't want to know," I evaded.

"Yes, I do," she insisted. "How old?"

"One hundred and sixteen this past February," I admitted.

"Alien?" she guessed. I nodded. "And Jack?"

I shook my head. "Human, just not from Earth, and not from now."

"The future?"

"And the past," I agreed.

"And Ianto?"

"Welsh. One hundred percent Welsh."

"God," she blurted. "Is he really your boyfriend, or was that a lie, too?" Laura pressed. I winced.

"He's Jack's boyfriend."

"You're _joking_. You're in love. I can tell," she interjected.

I nodded. "Yeah, and Jack loves us, too. But that's not what I'm trying to say."

"Aliens in Cardiff is what you're trying to say," she said calmly. "I heard something about that. Creatures up out of the sewers, right?"

"Some of them," I conceded. "Want to see it?"

"Bloody hell yes!" she exclaimed. "Anything worth making nice people like you lie to nice people like me must be pretty amazing," she said, coming back toward me and taking my hand.

"Is it sedated, Jack?" I inquired.

"Yeah. Bring your friend out. This little one won't give us any more trouble tonight," he called out, not bothering with the comms so Laura would hear him. She held my hand tightly as I walked her toward the door. "Hello there, Laura Harding," Jack said, smiling his winning smile, the Weevil in Ianto's care somewhere behind him. "Captain Jack Harkness."

"Captain of what?" she asked him. That made him laugh. It always did.

"A lot of things, over the years," he replied. "Want to meet the 'rodent' Sage said she smelled?"

"You were listening the _entire_ time?"

"Yep."

"That's not very polite," she pointed out.

"I had to. Sage said you had potential."

"Potential for what?"

"Dealing with the things we see. So... want to see?" Jack prompted.

"Yeah, I do. Show me," she pressed right back. He stepped aside. "Whoa."

"That's a very young one," I told her. "Smallest I've ever seen, actually. They average six feet tall." The Weevil Ianto was supporting was about four and a half feet tall. I probably could have taken it down myself if it hadn't been such a long day.

"And those things live in the sewers?"

"Yep," Jack replied. "So, Laura Harding, what do you think of it?"

"I wouldn't want to meet its parents in a dark alley," she voiced. "Can they talk?"

"Not that we know of, except for some sort of low grade telepathy amongst themselves... What do you think of Sage?" he asked next.

"Why's that relevant?" Laura asked defensively, finally pulling her eyes away from the Weevil.

"She's an alien, too," he reminded her.

"I like her fine, except when she's lying, but I can see why she had to," she shrugged.

"So, boyfriend?" he asked her.

"No."

"Girlfriend?" I tossed in, causing Jack to raise an eyebrow.

"Not for a while now," she replied.

"Parents, grandparents, invalid aunt?" Jack pressed.

"I don't even have a cat," she told him. "Why?"

"Can you get a week or two off from your job?"

"Easily. They give me the crap jobs no one else wants," she confessed ruefully.

"Do it," Jack told her. "Get a week to start with, then we'll see."

"See what?"

"If you've got what it takes."

"All right," she agreed readily. "But why are you trusting me with this... this knowledge? These secrets?"

"Because Sage is a good judge of character. The best. And she told me to trust you," he said simply.

"When was this? I never heard—"

_I didn't tell him out loud_, I projected into her head.

"You were in my head!" she blurted, appalled.

"Sorry," I apologized. "I had to know what you were thinking. When I told you we'd lost people, I meant it. Two valued members of our team... Two amazing friends that will never be replaced. It's hard to even begin to see anyone potentially taking up where they left off..."

"So your idea of an interview process is to go into people's heads?"

"I have to," I repeated.

_So you heard me thinking how much I like you_, Laura thought hard, closing her eyes.

_Yeah, I did_, I admitted, _but only because you were thinking about it so hard._ "I only hear the on-the-top stuff," I told her. "If you were keeping a secret, I'd probably know you were, but not what the secret was. It's not like reading the pages of a diary. It's more like whispers in the dark."

"While you girls get on with your whispers in the dark, Ianto and I are going to drop Weevil Junior here into the nearest manhole. Don't want his relatives coming out looking for him," Jack told us. "What's the ETA on the A&E server, by the way?"

"On my own, half an hour," Laura told him. "With Sage's help, I'd say half that, so long as we can find a replacement power cord."

"Take the Dark Talk (3) server's. Third row back, first rack," Jack suggested. "It was turned off; it shouldn't have fried."

"On it," I said, turning to go.

"Sage?" Jack called me back.

"Yes, Jack?"

"Thank you," he said, looking sad and worried. I leaned up and kissed him tenderly on the lips, making him smile. It was a small smile, but it was an improvement.

"You boys be careful," I said.

_You, too_, they both thought at me at the same time.

* * *

1) Nocturne #20 in C Sharp minor

2) Donna Noble, can you hear me? *cough*

3) Formerly a pirate radio station run by Abigail Crowe, an alien, species unknown. Torchwood shut down the station when she attempted to use an embedded signal to activate alien DNA that had been injected into human beings by New Eden via the Venus Clinic. Torchwood Site Missions, Series 2.


	9. Chapter 9

"What's Dark Talk?" Laura asked me as I was removing the power cord.

"Internet radio station," I told her. "Very underground. Conspiracy theories, mostly. You know, big sharp-toothed creatures living in the sewers of Cardiff and such," I told her, making her giggle.

"How does a pirate Internet radio station get its own server _here_?" she asked me.

"It was run by aliens," I told her. "Aliens with really good connections, bent on world domination. You know. The usual."

"And Torchwood shut it down," she guessed.

"Yes, they did. Blocked the signal, wiped the data. Sorted."

"_They_? Where were _you_?"

"Sick leave," I told her, which was basically true.

"I take it you're not the technician, then," she ventured. "You know a lot, but they managed without you and, well, you're considering me... Was your technician one of the ones who... didn't make it?"

"Her name was Toshiko," I told her, wiping away another treacherous tear before turning around and bustling back toward the hospital's server.

"I'm sorry. You must have been close," Laura said apologetically. I didn't answer her. It would have been too complicated to explain that the reason I was crying was Tosh and I hadn't had time to become close. She was brilliant and lovely and I'd lost her too soon.

"Let's get this cabling patched. Pity the CAT-7s on the Dark Talk server were severed in the blast. We were really lucky the power cable's unscathed," I changed the subject.

"Who else did you lose, Sage Smith?" Laura murmured, undaunted, stopping me with a gentle hand.

"Our medic," I told her, swallowing hard. "Owen."

"Were you two...?"

"A long time ago," I admitted. "How did you know?"

"You're blushing, and you look as if you can scarcely breathe," Laura told me, drawing me gently into her arms, prying my fingers from the cabling so it would fall to the floor. "I know you feel as if the world has ended," she whispered. "No one can replace the people you love, and no one can take away the pain. I won't try to do either of those things, Sage, but I do want to be useful, and I do want to be your friend," she said gently. "Can we try for that?" I nodded against her shoulder. "All right, then. Let's get to work. You can tell me whatever you like, if you feel like talking, and you can keep it to yourself if you don't. Sound fair?"

"Yeah," I managed to say. I had a bit more of my iced tea, then smiled at her. "Want to see a neat trick?"

"Is it an alien trick?" she asked me with an intrigued half-smile.

"Not really. Just something most humans haven't figured out yet," I said, pulling out my Penlight and adjusting the frequency.

"Humans have figured out penlights," Laura said, eyeing me oddly.

"It only _looks_ like a penlight," I told her, then sonically melded the frayed cabling back together; we only needed the power cable after all.

"What the bloomin' 'ell was _that_?" Laura blurted as I was replacing the power cable. "Was that a sonic modulator? Did you just use _sound_ to fuse that wiring?"

"Very good, Laura Harding," I congratulated her. "Let's get this baby switched on."

After we'd powered everything up, Laura called Cardiff A&E and asked them if their database was up. It was, and they thanked her profusely. "Not a problem," she said. "It's what we're here for." After hanging up, she said to me, "Are you sure you even need me?"

"We do," I assured her. "I'm playing catch-up on a lot of things. The truth is, I've been on sick leave since the year 2000," I finally admitted.

"What happened to you?" she blurted.

"I was blinded by a rogue Time Agent. Long story."

"Time Agent?" she echoed.

"Long story," I repeated. "I've only been back a few days. Also, Cardiff was _not_ bombed by terrorists, whatever you heard."

"Yeah, I figured that out a while ago," she told me. "Who did this?"

"Someone very twisted, very angry, and very determined," I told her.

"One man?" she asked me. I nodded. "One man did all of _this_?

"_Very_ determined," I repeated.

"Wow," she said, stunned. "So when I walk into this, I'll be facing enemies I didn't know existed. They will become my enemies simply by affiliating myself with you. With Torchwood. Is that what you're telling me?" I nodded. "What about the medic? Have you found a medic yet?"

"We're currently employing the aid of a friend from UNIT, but we have no idea when she'll be recalled," I told her. "They need her as much as we do. Her name is Martha Jones; you'll meet her in the morning."

"Anyone else?"

"Gwen Cooper. Formerly PC Gwen Cooper. If she's stand-offish, don't worry. Cardiff is her home, always has been, and she's very angry and far more hurt than she's admitting," I told her. "And if she's _not_ stand-offish, congratulations. That'll leave just me for her to yell at."

"What for? Why you?"

"I'm the newbie who wasn't here when the sky was falling," I admitted. "I was in London that night. If I'd been here—"

"She blames _you_ for the death of your friends?" Laura guessed.

"I blame myself," I said, "but Gwen likes to remind me. Not directly, mind you. She just takes jabs at me and Ianto. Says we're acting like hormone-driven teenagers. What she's really saying, though, is she thinks I'm irresponsible. Don't hold that against her, though. We've all had a rough time of late, and she seems to be a bit less angry with me. Just... listen to Jack, try your very best, and don't be afraid to voice your opinions to any of us. Anyone else, though... We're top secret. We don't exist. Jack'll give you the details."

"This is mad," Laura said.

"I know," I told her, smiling.

"I'm sure it wasn't your fault," she added.

"Thank you for saying so," I said softly.

"You love them. Even this Gwen. It's in your voice. Anything you _could_ have done, you'd have done it. Besides, Jack and Ianto don't blame you," she voiced.

"How do you know that?"

"Because Jack blames himself," she said, finishing off her iced tea.

"I think I may have underestimated you, Laura Harding," I said.

"Hardly," she voiced. "I'm the only woman in a London IT firm who isn't a secretary. You get used to secrets and being stabbed in the back, office romances and intrigue. I've simply learned to pay attention. I notice things people would prefer I didn't. I suppose in your line of work that's an even more useful talent than in mine, eh?"

"When exactly did you figure out I was lying to you?"

"When I realized your boyfriend knew more about this building than he should, even if he'd just come along with you on a job... That's when I began to suspect. When he forgot to ask which server I was here to see to—"

"Shit!" I blurted, making her laugh.

"I mostly set my suspicions aside because you could have assumed I was here to help wherever I could, which is what you more or less said when you asked me if there was 'any particular server' I was interested in, but yeah, I knew something was off about the two of you."

"That's good to hear," Jack said from the doorway. "An alert mind is always an asset. Ladies, I take it your work here is done?"

"She hardly needed me," Laura admitted. I blushed. "I take it your pest problem has been sorted as well?"

"For the moment," Jack replied. "Miss Harding, Ianto has booked you a room at the Century Hotel for the week. If you'll accompany me, I'll take you back to your car and point you in the right direction. Sage, Ianto, back to the Hub. I'll see you there once Miss Harding is settled."

"See you in the morning, then," Laura said to me, then kissed me on the cheek. She then strode up to Ianto and kissed his cheek as well, smoothing back a stray lock of hair that had plastered itself to his forehead. "Take good care of her," she murmured to him, then glanced back at me with a small smile. "Captain," she said.

"Jack, please," he said, offering his arm.

"Then it's Laura, not Miss Harding, Captain Jack," she teased him. "Let us be off."

Jack looked back at me and winked as they left.

Ianto strode up to me with the oddest look on his face. It was so intense that at first I mistook it for anger. When he lifted me off my feet and pinned me to the wall, though, I realized it was passion even before his lips met mine. I locked my ankles around his waist, feeling his erection pressed against me, throbbing in tandem with the beat of his pulse. I tasted blood and broke off the kiss, ran my tongue over my lips and discovered it was my own. "Ianto," I murmured, and he lowered me to the floor.

"I'm sorry," he said, cradling me gently against his chest. "I didn't mean... Well, after a year of kissing Jack..."

"It's all right," I told him.

"No, it's not," he voiced, frustrated.

"Yes, it is," I told him. "That was so... fucking... hot."

He chuckled, kissing the top of my head. "We should go."

"Ianto?"

"Yes?"

"I love you, you know. I really do," I told him softly.

"I know," he murmured. "I love you, too." He tipped my chin up and kissed me again, this time tenderly, almost reverently. "We really have to go," he said again.

We left with our arms around each other. By the time we arrived at the Hub, Jack and Laura had left for the hotel. We went to the boardroom to wait, our chairs pulled close together, and I drifted off to sleep with my ear pressed to Ianto's heart.

* * *

"Was there trouble?" Jack asked upon arriving and finding me groggy and with a split lip.

"No, no, Jack, I'm fine," I said, straightening up. "It was... a minor miscalculation."

"Ultimately my fault, I believe," Jack remarked, raising an eyebrow. Ianto lowered his head to the table, embarrassed. "Ianto," Jack said gently, moving behind him and taking him by the shoulders, straightening him back up, "everything is all right. Sage is tougher than she looks, and she's not angry. Are you, Sage?"

"Of course not," I reassured them. "A little rough and tumble can be a good thing," I added with a wink.

"How did I ever get along without this girl?" Jack asked the air and the walls around us, then took a seat across from us. "So... Laura seems very interesting. I hope she does well under pressure. Seems a bit too accustomed to having responsibility taken out of her hands, though. Sage, any thoughts?"

"She's a bit bitter, but she's young still. I guess we'll see her mettle when it comes to crunch time, and I hope we can recover from whatever damage she causes if she turns out to be all talk and no spine," I said.

"Ianto?"

"She took seeing a Weevil up close pretty well. Drove from London out of a sense of duty that she shouldn't have been feeling at all. Both are very good signs. She's sweet on Sage, though. Do you think that will be a problem?" He asked this last looking at me.

"If you're asking me if I swing that way, Ianto, I really don't know. I've never fallen for a woman. If you're asking if that'll get in the way of _us_, I've got two hearts, not three. What I mean is I don't see her the way she sees me. If it's a problem, it'll be hers, not ours... but yeah, it could interfere with work if she can't cope with it," I said at length.

"And you're sure that _you_ can?" Jack asked me, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm hoping I can, Jack. You know full well how I usually react when someone likes me," I pointed out.

"Yeah, you cut and run," he said. "So how can you guarantee me this time it'll be different?"

"Because I have the two of you to look after," I said. "Gwen, too. And Martha, for as long as we have her."

"There seemed to be a lot less animosity between you and Gwen this afternoon," he remarked.

"She listens to you, Jack," I shrugged.

"No," he laughed. "Gwen listens to herself. Ever since day one she's been calling me on my bullshit and putting me in my place. The only reason I can figure for her letting this one go is she finally realized it's not bullshit."

"Jack," I said softly, "come home with us."

"Sage..."

"Or we could stay here," Ianto suggested. "Make a bed out of sofa cushions, but big enough for three."

"What are you after, Sage? You think you're ready for this, but you're not," Jack protested.

"All I want is for the three of us to be near each other, Jack. You need Ianto right now; I know you do; and I'm keeping him from you. I'm a selfish bint, though, so I'm not ready to give him back to you entirely," I admitted. "That leaves two options: come home with us, or we'll make camp right here in the boardroom."

"Ianto, can we trust ourselves with this supposedly selfish girl? Because personally I think even beginning to move in that direction at this point makes _me_ the selfish one," Jack stated.

"Then we're all selfish, Jack, and let's _be_ selfish for once," Ianto said fiercely. "Come home with us, Jack," he said firmly. "Please."

"'Will you walk into my parlour?' said a spider to a fly," (1) Jack murmured.

"Please, Jack?" I pleaded. "I haven't shared a bed with you since last century."

"Last millennium," he pointed out. "Okay, I'll go, and it's practically a crime for me to say this, but the pants stay on."

"Deal," I agreed. "Come on, Ianto! Grab him before he changes his mind!"

* * *

1) "The Spider and The Fly" by Mary Howitt; poem. Often misquoted as "'Welcome to my parlour', said the spider to the fly", but here stated correctly. Which means Jack reads poetry. Which also explains why he recognized "I Cannot Stop for Death" so quickly.


	10. Chapter 10

I couldn't understand what Jack was so afraid of, but knowing how much more he'd done in his lifetime than I had, I trusted him when he said we had to be careful. I trusted that there was a dangerous aspect to the three of us being together, but I didn't really understand what it was.

Love is dangerous. This I understood. Love is painful. I believe the three of us understood these facts better than most people. Lust, though, was a concept I was far less familiar with.

That must sound like bullshit, coming from the girl who has been in love with Jack Harkness for nearly a century. Jack is one of the most beautiful creatures in existence, and not only that... he's got a way about him that exudes sexuality. He loves sex, and he was accustomed to having it as often as he possibly could. Since Devastation Day, he'd backed away from that. He'd left Ianto and me to explore each other emotionally and, yes, physically, but things kept getting in our way. The timing, as we had each stated when this all started, was terrible.

While Ianto and I were struggling with the nuances of each other's personality; both of us generally being rather reserved, and yet both of us having unpredictable playful streaks that sometimes bordered on dangerous; Jack had been consciously keeping himself out of the picture. Two people in love create a very complex situation. Adding a third can be a recipe for disaster... or absolute bliss. But when you bring lust into the room along with that love... the opportunities for jealousy, resentment, and dissatisfaction all multiply exponentially.

Ianto and I were innocents. Babes in the woods in many ways. Jack had already lived out his wild years and his lonely years and made a conscious decision to be with Ianto simply because he loved him so very much. I was a different matter entirely in that Jack had decided _not_ to be with me in that particular way out of love for me and fear for my safety.

Putting the person you ran from and the one you ran toward in the same room together is in itself a recipe for trouble. When you are still in love with them both, it's a blueprint for disaster. But if they also love each other and _desire_ each other... the outcome becomes absolutely unpredictable.

That was what Ianto and I did not understand. We thought the love the three of us had would be a wonderful thing no matter what. We believed that love conquers all. But most of the time, life teaches us that it isn't so. Life's favourite weapon for teaching this lesson, as Jack well knew, is lust.

* * *

"Jack," Ianto murmured, trying not to wake me as I slept pressed against his side with my head against his chest, "why are you still awake? And... staring?"

Jack was on his side watching us sleep, had been for over an hour. "Does she always do that?" he asked Ianto softly.

"Do what?" Ianto whispered back.

"Listen to your heart," Jack pointed out.

"Yeah, she does," Ianto replied, smiling down at me and then across the bed at Jack, who was keeping his distance. "I suppose it comforts her. Her hearts sound different."

"When she was little," Jack told him softly, "she'd curl up on top of me, right in the middle of my chest. I tried to get her to sleep in her own room when she was about ten, but she'd keep coming back and climbing into bed with me whenever I was home at night."

"And when you weren't?" Ianto ventured.

"She'd sleep in my bed anyway. When she was about sixteen, I came home from this mission... I don't even remember how long I'd been away... months... maybe even a year... I found her asleep in the middle of my bed with one of my shirts bundled up in her arms."

"I've done that," Ianto admitted. "Well, not sleep with your shirts," he amended, embarrassed. "When I thought I'd lost you... when we thought you were dead... I cried into the collar of your coat. I felt very lost without you, Jack. After that, when you left us... well, I found ways to be strong without you. Sage isn't sixteen and sleeping with your shirts when she misses you, Jack. She learned to be strong without you, too. You don't have to keep backing away from her."

"I'm not," Jack said defensively.

"Yes, you are," I let Ianto reply for me, even though their conversation had just woken me up.

"Are you guys arguing?" I murmured.

"A bit," Ianto told me softly.

"Jack, why are you all the way over there?" I inquired.

"'Miles to go before I sleep'," he muttered.

"No," I told him softly. "Not tonight. You're safe tonight. Come here."

He just looked at me, unmoving. I stood up on the bed and went to him, reaching down to grab his arms and pulling. "What the hell are you doing?" he asked me, his tone one of pure curiosity.

"Putting you where you belong," I told him, still trying to drag him toward Ianto.

"Okay, let go, I'm moving," he said. He crossed the bed so that he was next to Ianto but still leaving enough space in between for me. "Better?"

"Almost," I sighed. "You'll get there." I clambered off the bed. "See you in the morning," I told them, then padded out to Ianto's sofa.

"Did she just...?" Jack blurted.

"She did," Ianto agreed.

"Never ceases to amaze me," Jack murmured.

"That's because you keep forgetting she's not a child anymore, Jack," Ianto pointed out. "She's not the little girl climbing into your bed because she's lonely. She's the woman climbing out of it because she loves you."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

* * *

Jack and Ianto held each other and slept fitfully for an hour or so. The nineteenth time Jack shifted, Ianto murmured to him, "Why don't you go and get her? We'll never sleep with you worrying."

Meanwhile I'd been sleeping rather well on Ianto's sofa. It was very clean and comfortable, and up until a few days before I'd been sleeping alone for years. I awoke when Jack lifted me into his arms, but not entirely. "Is it morning, Jack?" I murmured.

"No, sweetheart," he whispered. I frowned. He wasn't a man who made a habit of using endearments.

"What's wrong?" I asked him.

"I just miss you," he told me.

"Oh, okay," I said softly, falling back to sleep before we'd even passed back through the doorway.

I woke up the next morning with my ear to Ianto's heart, Jack's arm across both our chests, and my hand held gently between both Jack's and Ianto's. It was one of those perfect moments when I felt completely safe and loved. I keep it locked away in a secret room in my mind, and I think of it in the dark times. That moment was ours, and no one will ever take that away from me, no matter how much the universe may change, no matter how many years may pass. No matter how many times we die.

They loved me then.

Nothing else really matters.

* * *

**[April 8, 2008 - April 21, 2008]**

**Continued in "Torchwood: City of Ruin"**


End file.
